Viacom is determined not to fall into the music industry's technophobic trap. Instead, it's embracing the online-video frenzy by releasing Jackass 2.5 directly onto the Web next week. Initially offered as a free streamed video on Blockbuster's Movielink, it will eventually move to pay outlets like iTunes and, yes, DVD — which is where this on-the-cheap knockoff probably would have landed just a couple years ago.
Boss Tweed makes a comeback outside the offices of MTV Networks this morning! Hey, at least he's marginally cuter than the Union Rat, who's needed a serious upgrade since, like, 1974. Viacom is having an information session for freelancers on benefits changes today, according to Mediabistro. When? At the same time as the WGA-MTV protest of course! Tricky and clever!
[Audible gasp!] Is it possible that MTV documentary series The HIlls, which purports to depict the lives of people who have achieved celebrity through another semi-scripted reality TV program as they navigate the world of Hollywood, might concoct dramatic scenarios into which they can place their thoroughly uninteresting subjects? Read about how producers pimped out their stars to some unknown rock band during a trip to Paris and wait for the basic cable universe to collapse all around you! [Page Six]
Maybe there's something to this World Wide Web fad after all. Well, anyway, the old boys at Viacom seem to think so. They've got this SVP Jason Witt fellow leading a new group called Digital Fusion. It's devoted to selling ads against MTV content on the information superhighway. Credit Sumner and the boys this much: They know their trends when they see them. But maybe they went too far out on a limb on this one. As Viacom studio execs keep telling striking writers, there's no money in online advertising. (photo by Joe Crawford (artlung))
Video guy Nick McGlynn hung out this afternoon with the outraged Viacom contractors. (Freelancers? Permalancers? Slave labor?) Actual employees in the eyes of the law, probably, considering how one staffer described her freelance staff. "They're here everyday, these guys comes in Monday to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, weekends, holidays, everything, to work and make this channel run," she told us. Steady paychecks render such commitment completely obsolete—most fully employed people we know support a wide-ranging interpretation of the conventional five-day-workweek. Best slogan heard at the (first!) Viacom Networks Walkout Of 2007: "No one sucks dick for free." (Also great: "No pills, no 'Hills.'" Ha!) Damn straight—we don't even tongue-kiss for anything less than one employer-sponsored retirement plan and a reasonable deductible.
The Writers Guild of America East is marching on Viacom Thursday morning! "Students and future members of the Writers Guild will join us to march with us, learn about the issues of our strike and show their support," reads a description of the event on their website. Hey, the longer the picket line, the shorter the strike—but will there be stickers and t-shirts? Let us know!
Thousands of Viacom's permalancers and contract employees have been encouraged to walk out and rally today at 3 p.m., in protest of the terms of their new contracts. N.B.: we rebut this announcement a little. The Times and the Post and others certainly have been alerted, and no doubt they'll finally show up today, but they sure aren't covering it yet—and that's absolutely absurd. A developing news story that affects thousands of working New Yorkers? At one of the largest media corporations in town? Hello? Anyone?
Last night, video guy Richard Blakeley and I headed down to the Hammerstein Ballroom to ask Viacom freelancers how they were, you know, feeling about getting Scrooged just in time for the holidays. Are they all revved up for the planned strike on Monday? "What strike?" said one guy. We're also thinking about adopting the kid who told us that he's currently unattached but if "he or she were, he would be at home." Oh honey, it really is probably time to give up the ghost on that "she" pronoun. Adorable. Inside, a huge glass snow globe was set up on stage; hired actors had a protracted "snowball" fight in it all night. Excessively pricey street theater is an oxymoron, we think. (Particularly indoors!) Very few senior managers were in attendance, though CEO Judy McGrath showed up briefly. Brave. Bonus! More party pix after the jump.
"MTVN Freelance, Temp and Animation employees hired on or before October 12th that are paid through in-house payroll and have received a direct deposit receipt or paycheck on all four of the following consecutive dates: October 18, October 25, November 1 and November 8." And there's more! Full memo after the jump.
MTV Networks employees are planning a walkout for Monday afternoon, and are spreading the word: "What do we do? Suck it up and deal? Leave the company? There is a third option—50% of the company stands up and says 'WE DO NOT ACCEPT THESE TERMS.'" Walking out is generally associated with student protest groups, like the East Los Angeles students who attracted attention to their cause in 1968 by leaving school grounds en masse. It's a more than telling association—freelance workers have so little leverage within their companies that they're forced to resort to dissent tactics employed by groups whose only bargaining chip is attendance.
Not content to limit themselves to revolt-by-t-shirt, MTV contractors have slipped these stickers under the doors of all their colleagues this morning, and asked fellow employees to "Please support your current and future freelance friends and colleagues by wearing this sticker tonight at the holiday party." Says a worker: "They are all over the floor and under the door of every office and on every desk. ROCK IT!"
The MTVN freelancers' petition we'd found its way to us just now and these downtrodden drudges have a plan! It includes subterfuge and silk-screening. "Wear your custom permalance T-shirt Thursday night at the Holiday Party," the petition suggests. "In addition to getting drunk and making out with co-workers Thursday night, let's make a statement!" Rioting contractors are encouraged to conceal their fightwear under whatever proper party attire they can afford. The full outrage is after the jump.
Of course Tequila's been a hit on MySpace for quite some time now; she says she accepts 10,000 to 20,000 friend requests a day. I'm not sure who Facebook's most popular member is — Scoble? I know you just can't wait for the first episode of A Shot At Love With Robert Scoble.
As Live Free or Die Hard co-star Bruce Willis surely could have warned Justin Long, cashing the paycheck for a voiceover in a second-rate animated family film is the easy part of the gig; the hard part is the fulfilling the oft-humiliating promotional responsibilities to support the movie.
MySpace's #1 publicity whore's ongoing search for bisexual love continues on A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. (Word to the wise, Tila: You better pick at least something with genitals, lest you want to face unflattering comparisons to Brad "Brutishly Refuses to Fall in Love with One of the 25 Women He Met on a Dating Reality Show" Womack!) In this clip, Tila has her remaining suitors and suitettes coat themselves in a sinfully rich layer of chocolate, then squat over a bucket, into which they teasingly wring the soupy brown substance.
A few weeks back, Wired told us about how all the bad boys at Vice want to be taken seriously now that they've got a bunch of Viacom money to build their mostly unwatched Vice TV (oh, we're sorry, "VBS.tv," because they wouldn't want it to be too associated with their immature lifestyle mag) website, so they've driven off co-founder and provocateur Gavin McInnes and report from Iraq and stuff. And today the New York Times reports that those Vice bad boys are all much more mature now and taking on serious issues in their immature lifestyle mag and also involved in this crazy VBS.tv venture with Viacom.
MTV has partnered with Elizabeth Arden and the Ford model-management agency to scour the Virtual Hills, a world based on reality show The Hills for a new model. Her gig? Serving as the virtual face of Mariah Carey's new, theoretically real fragrance, M. Those who create an avatar for the competition will be rewarded with a virtual version of the fragrance. What, so they can mask all that virtual body odor? The top virtual model, as voted by her peers, will be proclaimed the "Ford Models' first-ever virtual world model." One hopes the money Ford pays for this stinker of an idea will be virtual as well.
· Jamie Foxx signs a two-year deal to produce unscripted shows for MTV and VH1, with the first product of their new union being From Gs to Gents, a series "in which a group of men are given social makeovers in a bid to turn them into gentlemen," efforts that a guest-starring Foxx will entertainingly attempt to thwart by dragging them to nightclubs, pouring alcohol down their throats, and urging them to "make it rain" upon nearby members of the opposite sex. [Variety]
· DreamWorks/Paramount is discovering that they have their work cut out for them in trying to simultaneously sell an R-rated musical about a bloodthirsty British hair stylist to the different segments of the film's built-in, but hopelessly fragmented, audience. Potentially ineffective ads telling moviegoers "You've seen him flounce around on a pirate ship, now see him dance around the world's scariest barber's chair" to follow. [THR]
The genius of MTV's reality-TV programming is that it's not that real. The Hills itself is — get this — a faux reality show. But will an audience tuning into the passive escapism of The Hills, Pimp My Ride or Laguna Beach really want to go to the effort of logging onto a virtual world? Based on MTV's new advertising campaign, we're guessing the answer is "No." The music television pioneer has taken to airing 30-second TV commercials promoting Virtual Hills, the Second Life-like counterpart of the serialized docusoap. Notice how this machinima spot captures all the wit and charm of the Virtual Hills. So this is a fake real TV ad about the real fake version, online, of a fake real show on TV. Post-post-postmodern genius.
