The MySpace/MTV Candidates Forum

The social networking site and music channel will present intimate talks with Presidential candidates. Will their youthful audiences care?

By Ronald Grover

Want to be friends with Obama? Or Hillary? How about Rudy or Mitt, or any of the other Presidential candidates? MySpace and MTV figure there's a growing number of young people just itching to ask questions of the major candidates. Together, they're launching a series of one-on-one discussions with each of the Presidential candidates that will be shown on the Web and on television.

It's the latest experiment in participatory democracy, Internet style, that has become a huge new outlet for every political candidate worth his (or her) fund-raising committee. The joint deal between News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace unit and Viacom's (VIA) MTV network was hammered out "literally in a few days," says MySpace Chief Executive Officer Chris DeWolfe, as both outlets saw the opportunity to help educate younger viewers.

A One-on-One Appeal

It's the first time the two youth-oriented powerhouses have worked together, although DeWolfe says the companies have followed one another's political moves for years. (MySpace launched a voter registration campaign last October (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/31/06, "A Vote for MySpace"), and MTV has been involved in political education programs for years.)

The MySpace-MTV hookup follows a July debate on CNN (TWX) in which questions that had been submitted to YouTube (GOOG) were put to Democratic candidates Both DeWolfe and MTV President Christina Norman say their deal was in the works months before the CNN broadcast. Unlike the CNN debate, the MySpace-MTV format will have candidates answer questions in separate settings, in effect interacting with voters one-on-one by answering questions submitted online (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/16/06, "YouTube vs. MySpace").

Whether this is the future of electoral democracy remains to be seen. The CNN debates were roundly dissed by political experts (and most ordinary viewers, for that matter) for their softball questions. And with college kids largely tuned out of world events, it's hard to imagine these sessions getting much of an audience. Still, 81% of MySpace's overall audience is of voting age, and the site's own research shows they are twice as likely to interact online with a candidate as voters in general.

September Debut

MTV's viewers are more interested in key issues that affect their lives, according to MTV's Norman, who says they will come to the tube in large enough numbers to satisfy the network. The two executives didn't disclose financial arrangements, but said that there was some version of revenue-sharing attached to the joint venture (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/15/07, "Obama Wants to Be Your Friend").

The discussion with online viewers will take place on college campuses, and the first is scheduled for Sept. 27 with John Edwards from a college (as yet unnamed) in New Hampshire. Candidates, answering questions submitted to them from MySpace, will be featured individually, and their responses will be streamed over MySpaces new channel on the site, called MySpaceTV, and to MTV.com. The sessions also will be shown on MTV at later dates, says Norman. Each of the major political candidates have already signed up, according to MySpace, with most of them already having healthy exposure to online audiences through existing pages on MySpace and other online outlets.

Grover covers the media and entertainment industry for Bloomberg Businessweek in Los Angeles.