Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace To Challenge MTV?
Targeting the youth demographic is not the only reason Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace, the music savvy social network. Robert Young believes that Murdoch isgoing to use MySpace as a channel to set upa competitor to MTV, “Much like Viacom’s CBS decided to use the broadband web to bypass cable and compete against the 24-hour news networks like CNN and FoxNews.”
From Young (on Om Malik’s blog):
I’m willing to bet that he will go even further by eventually extending the MySpace brand to include a dedicated cable & satellite network/channel. He is after all an old media guy. In fact, just a couple of weeks before News Corp. announced the deal, we all witnessed the web’s potential in this context when AOL’s webcasting audience for Live 8 outreached MTV and ABC’s ratings of the same event. Such a data point can go a long way towards justifying a $580 million price tag.
In addition to live concerts, MySpace is an ideal platform to release music videos (which the major record labels are desperately trying to monetize), as well as other short-form reality programming (think Fox’s “American Idol”) that’s likely to attract the 22 million youngsters in the MySpace community… an audience that happens to also watch MTV.
