MTV and BET: 'RIGHTS' AND 'AWARDS' SHARE THE HONORS THIS YEAR

Cable World, Sept 23, 2002

Byline: Shirley Brady with Staci D. Kramer

It's fitting that MTV and BET are co-winners of this year's NAMIC Excellence Award for best television spots. In addition to winning accolades for their individual efforts - MTV's Fight for Your Rights PSAs and BET's on-air promos for the second annual BET Awards - the Viacom-related sister networks this year are also collaborating for the first time ever on public service spots.

In an effort to extend the message of the Fight for Your Rights public service campaign to a diverse audience, the networks partnered to produce anti-discrimination spots that target African-Americans and Hispanics. Directed by Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever), the spots will air on both networks through the end of the year.

The synergy underlies Viacom's commitment to diversity across all its networks and its ongoing effort to refresh and extend that message to even greater audiences.

That's why MTV is receiving a nod from NAMIC for its updated Fight for Your Rights campaign. The music network began the FFYR initiative in 1999. Last year, responding to research, they sought to drive the message home with punchier, shorter segments to grab viewers' attention. The solution: They replaced the traditional 30-second spots with an ongoing series of 15-second PSAs called SNAPS (Smart New Approach to Public Service) offered in a double rotation.

Literally starting with a snap, the fast-paced spots send a variety of messages in a format designed to grab the attention of MTV's young audience and open their minds. The flexible, open-ended concept made it easy to add SNAPS spots addressing the aftermath of 9/11.

In the "Stupid Questions" spot, a young Arab-American woman repeats some of the demeaning questions she's likely to hear including "Are you related to any of the terrorists?" The theme isn't limited to 9/11; in another, an African-American male does the same with questions including "Why can't black people just get over slavery?" All the spots send viewers to www.FightForYourRights.com.

"We wanted to get people where they lived a little bit, [in] those little offhanded comments we make," explains Stephen Friedman, MTV's VP of strategic partnerships. "Snap. Look at what you're doing, wake up and think about it before you say it next time." The new wave of SNAPS extends the FFYR concept to self-protection with spots about sexually transmitted diseases.

BET is sharing in this NAMIC award for its series of equally snappy, and very funny, spots promoting its second annual BET Awards last June. "We did lots of focus group research telling us what our viewers like - and more importantly, don't like - about awards shows," says Ava Hall-Mattison, BET's director of special projects. "They told us they want to be entertained and they enjoy the glamour and outfits, but they didn't want to hear celebrities talk about things other than their particular category, or go on and on while accepting their award."

So Hall-Mattison and BET senior creative services director Lisa M. Jones worked with New York-based Drop Squad Pictures to shoot a series of cheeky spots titled "Awards Show Etiquette" showing celebs-run-amok as an example of what not to do.

Awards co-hosts Cedric the Entertainer and Steve Harvey introduce the spots, which spoof "bad celebrity behavior," such as Halle Berry's teary Oscars acceptance speech and under-dressed outfits on the red carpet.

"BET is looked at to be the ultimate ambassador for diversity in the cable industry," says VP of corporate communications Michael Lewellen. "We are distributed to 74 million homes which is a lot more than just African-American households, so we strive for not just a diversity of look in our on-air creative but also of thought, in terms of programming. And that extends to our creative."