Citing Young People’s Disillusionment With Obama, MTV Drops “Choose or Lose” Slogan…
Hope and change claims another victim.
(NY Times) — After nearly 20 years of “Choose or Lose,” MTV is changing the name of its election season campaign.
The youth cable channel’s coverage will be labeled “Power of 12,” a nod to both the election year and the notion that 18- to 29-year-olds have a lot of political power if they choose to wield it.
The name change is, in part, a statement about the cynical mood of the youth voting bloc. While young people turned out in unusually high numbers to support Barack Obama in 2008, MTV’s research into “Choose or Lose” found that many felt they had lost anyway.
“They were so passionate,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the president of MTV. “And then they hit this wall of the economy.”
The “Power” campaign, to be announced on Monday, implies that choosing is not all that matters. “Voting is one step in the process — just one step,” Mr. Friedman said. “The question for this generation is, they’ve got this power, will they exert it?”
For MTV, a unit of Viacom, presidential election cycles provide opportunities to show off the channel’s relevance to its youthful demographic and motivate young people to take action.
The “Choose or Lose” campaign started in 1992. That year, at a town hall symposium sponsored by the channel, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton was asked whether he had ever tried marijuana and he famously replied, “I didn’t inhale.” The campaign has used the “Choose or Lose” label ever since.
There have been interviews, voter registration drives, news reports, online chats and parties. On the eve of election day in 2008, for instance, MTV showed a 30-minute question-and-answer session with Mr. Obama.
But this year, staff members at MTV’s initial meeting about the coming elections agreed that a name change was required.
“We felt like it no longer truly represented the complexity and the issues that face our audience,” Mr. Friedman said.
Young people, he said, are generally disillusioned about the present and about politics, yet still hopeful about the future. “It is almost a topic they’d rather not think about,” he said.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 18- to 29-year-olds were backing Mr. Obama more than any other demographic group, yet they were also paying less attention to the campaign than any other.
Posted by ZIP on Monday, December 19, 2011, at 9:27 am | 
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What and now he loses MTV…..get ready for martial law people….we will be sure to see Holder and O-straight-up-dickhead out in force with “his” people to put all non-believers in line….or into a FEMA camp for you……
MTV is still on the air??
I used to love MTV. Music videos and the occasional Music TV Show like “Remote Control”. Now all crap. It is rare to see music, and when they do show music, it is not my style. Just reality TV.
MTV is a good example of how liberals can ruin a good thing. Right now the liberals are trying their best to ruin another good thing- The United States.
New area to force young dumb kids into voting for obama, yet again..
Lets hope parents,friends and other family are smart enough to counter this program and that’s what they will be trying to attempt(Program)our child to vote left, lets counter this with the truth.
Good. Stay home.
Does Lowes advertise on MTV?
Hate to break bubbles, but the “Power of 12” refers to the mental age of the typical MTV viewer.
It is also a thinly veiled reference to the age at which they become sexually active after a steady diet of MTV “reality shows.”
“They were so passionate,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the president of MTV. “And then they hit this wall of the economy.”
Fickle kids. Money isn’t everything (unless you’re running a television network).
To me, this sounds as though the MTV voters will be staying home this election.
MTV was a music channel, not a political action committee. The only reason it became one is because Obama was getting help from all the rap music (if you wanna call it that) stars, who were behind him ONLY because he was thought to be black.
“Stephen K. Friedman, the president of MTV. “And then they hit this wall of the economy.”
Said wall erected by the idiot they helped put in the White House.
Ha HA, braindead punks. Enjoy your decades of servitude brought by the plankton brained poseur you chose to elect.
In other words, the uninformed who believed in “Choose or Lose” ended up “Choosing and Losing.”
Perhaps a better name change for the campaign would have been ‘Choose AND Lose’.
In 2008 They Chose, we Lost.
MTV viewer: “…but they had such a cool message…and it rhymed…and he transcended racial lines…and he went to Harvard…and he promised us everything…I was sure with Obama in the White House, I would be able to attend college for the rest of my life – tuition-free, of course. Now they tell me I have to get a job and my master’s degree in lesbian African-American studies will not pay me $250,000 per year for 15 hours-a-week. I am so bummed.”
I don’t think they know the difference between spit or swallow
MTV, what a waste of eyesight and brain cells. However, maybe these “young people” learned a valuable lesson. All choices have consequences, and some of those consequences show up sooner rather than later.
BTW, what’s this 18-29 being called ‘young people’? After 21, hopefully you are an adult.
Its certianly wont be a merry christmas for Obama on the 25th of December
“They were so passionate,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the president of MTV. “And then they hit this wall of the economy.”
THAT WALL WAS ERECTED BY RULING LIBERAL ELITES, DESIGNED BY OBAMA FOR REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. Trying not to sugarcoat the economy.
“And then they hit this wall of the economy.” –Stephen Friedman, president of MTV
Um…yeah, Steve, economy is in bad shape. So what do Dems/Libs propose? More burdens on small business (Obamacare, anyone?), more crazy EPA regulations, more support for unions (unions can use threats and pro-union laws to destroy competing small, non-unionized firms), and an endless stream of movies and TV shows out of lib-run Hollywood demonizing businesses and businessmen.
But I’ll bet you sorry, clueless bastards are too blind to make any connection between anti-business policies of Obozo and his lackeys and the damping effect on the U.S. economy.
So you’ll keep on supporting Dem/liberal/”progressive” policies, and you’ll continue to wonder why our economy is taking so long to recover.
Clueless.
MTV losy all rellevance after it ran its first RAP video.
Someone must have realized that if they continued to keep up this program of pushing the Democratic candidate on young Americans they would need to change the slogan to “Choose AND Lose.”
I personally think they should choose the slogan…”Bail and Jail”