For years the MTV generation was dismissed as the American electorate’s most politically apathetic. But in a year of an unpredictable surge of voter interest, the 18-to-29 age group is emerging as a potent force. Polls find that nearly 75 percent say they will vote in November, compared with just 40 percent in 1988..,While their expected involvement partly mirrors an apparent yearning for change by the entire population, the role of MTV can t be ignored. Since the New Hampshire primary last February, the network’s “Choose or Lose” campaign and its “Rock the Vote” registration drives have helped mobilize a powerful voting bloc. “The notion that the MTV audience are lazy couch potatoes is wrong,” says Freston, who is slowly expanding MTV’s domain from pop music to the entire spectrum of youth culture. “We’ve known all along that they’re concerned, worried and politically independent.”
So far, the “Choose or Lose” campaign is working mostly to the Democrats’ advantage. Unlike Perot and Bush, who have seemed to worry that an MTV appearance would make them look undignified, Clinton and Gore have shrewdly embraced the network’s young audience and rock spirit. For two guys who enthusiastically played Fleetwood Mac on the closing night of the Democratic convention this summer, the MTV milieu isn’t such a stretch. “The Republicans are making a huge mistake in writing off the youth vote,” Gore recently told NEWSWEEK. “I’ll stack up the questions and the dialogue on this show against any interview show in the United States. And if George Bush and Dan Quayle don’t understand that, it’s their loss.” The polls suggest that he’s right: the Clinton-Gore ticket’s message of change has struck a powerful chord. So has Ross Perot. While 54 percent of the 18-to-29 vote backed Bush in 1988, a NEWSWEEK Poll this year shows him down to 20 percent in that age group.
MTV is rallying the young electorate by packaging politics like music videos: hyperkinetic, noisy, with simple messages and frequent repetition. Key issues to young voters-AIDS, the environment, jobs and education-get frequent airing in the four-minute pieces that play on “MTV News” several times a day. (NEWSWEEK’S Jonathan Alter serves as a paid consultant to MTV.) And the forums with Clinton and Gore have allowed kids to take their concerns directly to the presidential and vice presidential candidates. Last week, as Arrested Development’s rap video “Tennessee” blasted from four TV monitors, the vice presidential nominee mounted a stage in a mid-Manhattan studio. Surrounded by colorful CHOOSE OR LOSE logos (Gore mistakenly referred to the slogan on air as “Choose to Lose”) and an audience of 170, the senator answered questions about subject’s ranging from his environmental record to his service in Vietnam. Why wasn’t Bill Clinton forthright about smoking marijuana? “I think he was being honest,” Gore replied. Which rock stars have supported his campaign? “I’m going to [appear] with R.E.M.,” he said, “and I was with the Lovemongers in Seattle.” In the control booth, MTV’s news director Dave Sirulnick, 28, shouted through his headset, “Go tell Gore he did a great job and tell him we loved the Lovemongers.”
MTV has found a political voice and wants to capitalize on it. Yet the network can’t afford to alienate its music-only-please constituency. “We’re not going to sacrifice our main franchise,” says Freston, who expects the music videos to remain 80 percent ofthe programming. After Election Day, MTV’s news division plans a yearlong campaign promoting “tolerance”–racial, religious and sexual-with biweekly features and occasional hour-long documentaries, including one about growing up in South-Central Los Angeles. “We call it ‘MTV Goes to the ‘Hood’,” jokes Freston. Meanwhile, President Bush may still make a last-minute appearance on one of the forums. And Clinton and Gore haven’t ruled out an MTV post-victory encore, which would give the cable network unprecedented stature. Don’t expect a rock-and-roll “McLaughlin Group” just yet. But nobody can accuse MTV of just “jiving” anymore.
