BY ELISE LIU

Tom Freston became CEO of MTV Networks in 1987. After the 2004 split of media juggernaut Viacom, Freston became President and CEO of its entertainment branch, which included not only MTV’s holdings but also BET and Paramount Pictures, a post he occupied until the end of 2006. Freston chatted with the HPR about the complex relationship between the entertainment industry, young voters, and the political process.

Harvard Political Review: What sort of role do you think MTV has taken in promoting politics among young people?

Tom Freston: MTV historically always did a lot of audience research, trying to find out what the audience was interested in, and there was always an attempt to reinvent the network every few years. It started out only with music. Then we found out in the early 90s, when young people had the lowest voting performance, that this perception existed that young people just weren’t that interested in politics. The research shows that that wasn’t the case for a number of reasons.

First, they were interested, but they felt they weren’t being talked to directly—that is, in the forms of media that they enjoyed—by the politicians. Secondly, they felt that the politicians were not speaking to them about the issues they really cared about. They were very interested issues like jobs, education, and student loans. Those seem to be subjects that a lot of the younger people never really heard about from politicians. And thirdly, they didn’t come across the politicians very often in their preferred media outlets. So we began to engage the candidates, and the charge was just to try and speak to young people on their terms, about the issues they care about. We wanted to turn things upside down—to give candidates an opportunity to directly connect with young people and tailor their message to young people.

HPR: What do you think MTV does better than the mainstream political outlets that has made it successful in trying to reach a youth audience?

TF: The fact of the matter is that young people don’t watch Crossfire. The average age of the CNN viewer is over sixty. The same conditions hold for most of the other news channels—Fox News included. Young people get a lot of news online and other places, but politicians who think they are going to reach a broad range of people by only being on Crossfire are sorely mistaken.

HPR: From your experience with Rock the Vote and other campaigns, what would you say are the most successful techniques to try to reach young voters?

TF: Rock the Vote was really about increasing voter registration, initially. And they liked a lot of the public service announcements that were done with the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Madonna—provocative or interesting ways to tell people why they should be partaking in the democratic process. We didn’t really do any door-to-door canvassing and that type of get-out-the-vote stuff.

We found that people were interested in the candidates. They were interested in the forums where there would be unfiltered questioning about topics they were interested in.

HPR: Why do think it’s so important for young voters to get involved?

TF: Well, young voters, 18- to 29-year-olds are about twenty percent of the potential total voters. So they can make or break any election. And these days they are generally concerned with, number one, the war in Iraq; number two, health care; and number three, the economy. The point generally is that if you’re going to be a member of a democratic society, you should participate and not let decisions be made without you at the polls. There’s been a big run-up in youth voting in the ’06 and the ’04 elections. It’s sort of turned around, since there had generally been a decline since 1972, when the voting age was lowered to 18 from 21.

It’s unfair to say that young people were disconnected or “unplugged” from the political process, but they felt very alienated from it, and tended to focus on local issues, local politics, and local volunteerism. Since 9/11, we’ve really seen their interest in national issues skyrocket, and their voting performance validates that. ]]>http://hprsite.squarespace.com/the-politics-of-rocking-the-vo/rss-comments-entry-1510713.xml