Digital Hollywood: MTV creates multi-platform series

DIGITAL: $5 Dollar Cover: Memphis available on AT&T;, iTunes, TV

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 5/5/2009

MAY 5 | DIGITAL: SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Producers are simultaneously crafting content for a widening array of platforms in order to fit consumers’ rising interest for online and mobile technologies, said participants at Digital Hollywood here on Tuesday.

MTV’s just launched drama/reality hybrid $5 Dollar Cover: Memphis was filmed for use as either 15 six-to-eight minute episodes suiting Web rollout, five 22-minute episodes for TV or one feature-length film. That flexibility should prove helpful, as MTV originally envisioned the program to premiere online, but has now bowed it across its cable network including MTV2 and college-channel MTVu.

“It was a shift from what we had expected,” said David Gale, executive VP of new media at MTV Networks.

Additionally, $5 Cover episodes are available through AT&T’s wireless network. Plus, iTunes has scored an exclusive two-week window to offer episode downloads prior to MTV running them across its channels.

The series is a dramatization of stories from real-life Memphis musicians, most of them unsigned acts, as they try to become successful. A second installment, $5 Dollar Cover: Seattle, is already in development.

Series geared toward traditional TV audiences, such as ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, is increasingly adding Web and mobile content to satisfy fans.

Mobile text voting for the celebrity dance competition has increased 234% in its current season eight from when the show first debuted that option a few years ago. Also, fans signing up to receive text alerts about the program have more than doubled between season seven and season eight.

Popular online segments of Dancing With the Stars include “Confessionals,” in which fans hear backstage stories from contestants, as well as a separate competition in which viewers vote for their favorite professional dancers.