MTV announced on Thursday a new “celebration of the year in music,” using an expert panel of its own executives as well as its viewers to debate top ten lists and hand out awards in four different categories.
Rather than host a one-off show to commemorate this – as has been done in the past – MTV is going multi-platform and multi-day.
The cable channel has recruited three different divisions of its operation – MTV News, MTV.com and MTV Music & Talent – to collaborate on three lists – EDM (electronic dance music) artist of the year, song of the year and artists of the year.
Starting on Monday Dec. 12 from 8 am to 9 am ET, the editors from those three divisions will debate the options for EDM artist of the year. They will count down the top 10 save the top two spots, which will be revealed at 5 pm as Sway conducts a live interview with the artist.
The same procedure will be repeated on Wednesday Dec. 14 and Thursday Dec. 15 for song of the year and artist of the year respectively.
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“In a social world it makes more sense purposefully leaving two open spots, leaving it open during the day so everyone can take to Twitter,” Ryan Kroft, Vice President of MTV News told TheWrap. ”MTV News always does its own year-end list. What’s unique here is that it’s not an MTV News thing or it’s not an MTV.com thing.”
Meanwhile, MTV fans will vote on the best live musical performance of the year. Since the options are only from MTV performances, the nominees include Adele’s “Someone Like You” from the MTV Video Music Awards, Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” from the O Music Awards 2 and Odd Future’s “Sandwiches and Yonkers” from the mtvU Woodie Awards.
The key element to all this for MTV is the multi-platform nature of it. The "celebration" combines shows on the flagship MTV network with related stories on MTV News and MTV.com, re-broadcasts on MTV's other channels and — at least the network hopes — a lively discussion on social media in between.
“Over the last year we’ve been really focused on transmedia storytelling – crafting narratives that span across multiple platforms and screens,” Kroft said. “We’ve been working closely across departments as well, so it seemed like the perfect time to come together and collaborate.”
Transmedia storytelling is what inspired the “O Music Awards,” a digital-focused music award show that had two iterations in 2011.