Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

This post originally started out explaining why YouTube should be used to help promote TV shows, but in the space of day Viacom have decided to pull down the clip I wanted to use as an example. I wanted to reference a clip from this year’s MTV Movie Awards where the event’s host Sarah Silverman mocked Paris Hilton, who was in the audience, before the socialite began her prison sentence. It had been viewed at least 200,000 times before if was removed from YouTube. Instead I’m going to explain why they are dumb. Here’s my quick and easy formula:

Piaras watches clip from MTV Movie Awards on YouTube on Monday afternoon
+
Piaras proceeds to watch show later that evening on MTV because he thought the YouTube clip was funny
=
One more pair of eyeballs that Viacom can use to pull in advertisers

Yes I have heard the arguments that YouTube is profiting off Viacom’s content, but in this case that is not true. I ended up watching some of the show because I had seen the clip online. It was the first time I watched the show in years - again thanks to YouTube.

If YouTube had the entire ceremony on their website, then I would agree that they are profiting off someone else’s content. However by making snippets or trailers available online, you can encourage people to tune in when the show airs. Viacom’s decision simply does not reflect the viewing habits of the public. A BBC article on timeshifting disclosed that “internal research by E4 found one episode of its teenage drama Skins was seen by 900,000 people when screened on a Thursday evening in February. But the figure grew by 305,000, or 34%, when viewing from recordings, repeats and the E4+1 service were added.” By making some content available you can still drive viewership.

Rather than file lawsuits or throw your toys out of your pram in general, look for ways to encourage viewers to tune in later by actively making content available (and then chase down the content you feel infringes your copyright.) Mark Cuban recently had somewhat similar thoughts about how the Oscars could have been promoted online. However, instead of following this advice:

OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said ” Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com”

IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.

And I would do the same thing for EVERY moment and segment in the Oscars.

Make clips like the Sarah Silverman’s commentary about Paris Hilton available and then some brief information about how to view the rest of the show. Post it once and then watch as hundreds, if not thousands of sites, link to the content.

Seriously, how many of the Awards’ viewers would simply tune in to watch that single segment and then change channels straight away? By and large MTV have always tried to cause some controversy on their shows in order to create word-of-mouth and boost viewership figures. The Britney and Madonna kiss a number of years ago must have pulled in huge numbers from people talking about it in the media, officeplace and online. Did Viacom issue takedown notices to all these individuals to stop talking about the incident? I think not.

By making snippets from the show available online, all you’re doing is creating additional talking points to encourage people to promote your content online. Include information about how viewers can watch the rest of the show and then boost your ratings.

It’s a shame that I can’t show you that clip, but it’s Viacom’s loss.

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