The Story of the VGX - How an award show got raped because of 'going digital'

[shadowDOESrock]

This week Viacom rebooted the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards after a 10-year run.

The 'VGX' was an experiment by the Media Giant 'Viacom' to test out a new way for future award shows.
All future award shows of every topic, I might add.

Speaking with Casey Patterson, executive vice president of event production at Viacom, before the show's airing, she told Polygon that the company definitely sees VGX as a much larger experiment.

"I think it's a bigger picture experiment on broadening out the reach," she said. "When you think about the big picture of this and the way people are consuming, that they are willing to consume media in so many different places in so many different ways, I think that this is an organic step. I think we all know TV everywhere and interactivity is the future. At some point we all have to be brave enough to take the first step into the new world. And there is no audience more pre-disposed to interacting with their content and watching it on all of these different platforms and devices then gamers.

Show host and executive producer Geoff Keighley says the classic idea of award shows are "antiquated," be they for video games, music or movies.

"Look at the other awards shows out there for other mediums," he said. "An award show of people getting up and accepting trophies on television I think is just not very great TV. We have evolved the VGAs into a format that still works for television because we have breaking news inside of it."

The VGA's have influenced other awards shows before - The Oscars and all sorts of MTV Awards started airing "exclusive trailers" for next year's movies, etc just the year after the VGA's have done it for the first time for award shows.

"I remember we started doing that and then the next year the Oscars starting doing sneak peeks of the next year of movies," he said.

The decision to first air VGX on a multitude of websites and streaming services (a one-hour highlight of the show aired days later on Spike TV) was driven by the notion that gamers are simply watching less TV.

"We're trying to follow that audience and lead that audience to the places where they want to consume content," Keighley said. "Moving forward we are going to be doing less on TV and more digital because that's where that audience is."

"I think reversing the model is the very best thing we can try," Patterson said. "We should be experimenting. We shouldn't be afraid. We are a company that is great at events and we know how to do that and we can do them in a big way. I don't think we should be afraid to try this."

Viacom currently owns Paramount, MTV, Nick, BET, Spike as well as Xfire.com and Gametrailers.com

Source: http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/9/5191870/vgx-viacoms-experiment

[Hakudamashi]

When you say "raped"...