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- The MTV Video Music Awards aired on CBS, Paramount’s broadcast network.
- It makes sense given the new media era we’re in.
- Even if it was a little weird for the olds like me to hear a CBS football crew promoting Doja Cat.
News item: David Ellison, who is now running Paramount, would like to find ways to increase the value of his cable networks, like MTV.
Also a news item: On Sunday night, one of MTV’s most popular programs aired on … CBS, Paramount’s broadcast network (as well as on MTV itself).
Does that make sense? Sure.
And it’s pretty simple: The Video Music Awards, which used to be a very popular entertainment event back in the era when MTV was a very popular cable channel, is still a little bit popular, even though MTV isn’t anymore.*
And while there’s an ongoing debate about whether Big Media companies should put their most valuable stuff on their own streamers or on their broadcast networks, there’s very little debate about whether they should run on basic cable channels — those channels are going, going, gone.
That’s why the NFL games Paramount owns the rights to run on CBS on Sundays. The same for “60 Minutes.” It’s also why up until this year, CBS was broadcasting the Country Music Awards — which also originated on a Paramount-owned cable channel. (This year’s award show, along with other Paramount-owned shows, were “paused” because … David Ellison was in the process of buying Paramount.)
And yes, it was a little weird for us olds to see and hear CBS’s football crew promoting a Doja Cat performance later that night; it really shouldn’t be.
The whole point of broadcast TV at this point is to carry NFL games, and then find other low-cost programming to fill in the remainder of the schedule. Awards programs don’t have any repeat value — but they do generate plenty of free publicity from outlets happy to tell you about who wore what and did what, and Paramount can wring more value out of its own clips on platforms like YouTube.**
*If you want to tell me that it’s weird that MTV hosts the Video Music Awards when it doesn’t show music videos anymore, no need — everyone has already done that.
**If you want to tell me that it’s ironic that MTV and Paramount program for YouTube, years after Paramount’s predecessor company sued YouTube and lost decisively, I hear you.
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