HOWZAT

According to a report by Ofcom, the telecom regulator, 16 to 24-year-olds, a key demographic group for advertisers and MTV’s core audience, now watch television for an average of 18 hours 20 minutes a week. That compares with 25 hours 30 minutes for the average viewer. The number of hours watched by 25 to 34-year-olds is also slipping. MTV and its rivals will benefit from the fact that these viewers are more likely to watch channels outside the terrestrial set of BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel Four and Five. But across the world the trend is clear — young people are watching less television.

Online audiences are experiencing phenomenal growth, but over the past three years MTV’s ratings growth was only 5%, said the research firm Bernstein. Tellingly, VH1, with an older, more loyal audience, grew 17%.

“In cable they were cutting edge,” said Thompson. “Now they are the old guard. For MTV ‘old’ is not good.”

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From day one, MTV has aimed at the most fickle audience on the planet — the young. And the network has had to adapt quickly to their changing needs to survive.

Bill Roedy, vice-chairman of MTV Networks and president of MTV Networks International, joined MTV in 1989 and has overseen much of its international expansion. Roedy said the channel’s ability to change with its audience meant MTV was ideally suited to the challenges of the internet.

“The organisation is very decentralised. This was a conscious decision from day one,” said Roedy. “In India, MTV is very colourful and self-effacing. Bollywood’s influence is everywhere. Japan is very interactive, very technological. Italy is very stylish. Britain, with its rich music heritage, has nine music channels, the most of any market. In Indonesia we have the call to prayer,” said Roedy.

Local diversity had allowed MTV to build a strong bond with its audience which had got stronger as the music market had fragmented, he said. Digital television and the internet had made it possible to launch more and more channels and services to those niche audiences. “We love diversity and now that the digital platforms have taken off we can tailor what we offer for a digital audience,” he said.

Michiel Bakker, managing director of MTV Networks UK and Ireland, said: “This place feels like a start-up company every year.” The firm has to keep changing to keep up with its audience. Right now the internet is dictating those changes.

Bakker said: “The decline of television hasn’t happened. People SMS (text), surf the net and message each other while they are watching television. The two are happy to coexist.” But viewers did want more control, he said.

In response, Bakker is launching MTV Flux in Britain. With Flux, MTV was in effect handing over a channel to its viewers, he said. They would be able to “put up their own video clips and messages and choose what is shown on the channel”.

It is a concept that is wildly popular on the internet but MTV is late to the “social networking” party.

Last summer News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, beat Viacom in a bidding race for MySpace.com, the social-networking community that signed up its 100 millionth user this week. MySpace users create their own community, putting up videos, blogs and linking their account to their friends and to websites they like.

Then there is You Tube. Still privately owned, You Tube is less than two years old and now gets more than 100m viewers a day for its video clips, many of which are made by its users.

MTV, too, has been on a buying spree, adding Neopets, a virtual pet site, college publishing group Y2M and the online gaming and film company Atom. “It’s not necessary for us to be first in this space,” said Bakker. “You need to be fast and you need to be nimble, but we also have to be there when the audience is ready for it.”

But not everyone is convinced. “Everyone recognises MTV is one of the best brands in the business,” said an executive at one big advertiser who wanted to remain anonymous. “But there is so much competition. Who is to say that You Tube isn’t the next MTV?” In the music industry, too, there is a feeling that MTV is under threat. Many executives are still angry that Viacom used their content to build an empire worth billions of dollars.

As rivals get stronger, the MTV brand faces tough competition and can no longer exert the same leverage that it did in the past.

One music-business executive commented: “They have said in the past, ‘We won’t put your band on the MTV Music Awards, say, unless you do X or Y.’ But now they’re smart enough to realise that leverage isn’t what it used to be.

“I don’t know how credible their digital strategy really is. MTV has its brand and a huge presence in the world, but its business model has been turned on its head.”

Pop sensation Lily Allen and the Mercury prize-nominated group Arctic Monkeys both used MySpace to launch their music careers.

As MTV’s imitators have shown, formats are easy enough to copy. Video audiences are also famously impatient — they soon move on.

For MTV’s new rivals it could be a case of You Tube today, Who Tube? tomorrow. But like any pop star reaching her 25th birthday, MTV knows there will be younger, hipper rivals coming up fast.

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