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I Want My, I Want My...Vevo TV

The successful jingle and song lyric from Dire Straits, I Want My MTV may no longer be as fashionable as it once was.  At its launch, MTV was cutting edge with VJs and an emphasis on music videos.  It's style was hip and current and it worked perfect with a new technology of cable TV in the home.  But that was more than 30 years ago and today, MTV is one of a number of music/video channels reaching a younger demo.

With costs of cable rising and younger audiences moving from cable to online for their entertainment, a new channel has emerged that may just be to broadband what MTV was to cable, Vevo TV.  "Vevo took another step towards becoming a full-on music TV network Tuesday with the launch of Vevo TV, a 24-hour live stream of curated programming. The channel is using MTV-like VJs, and is at launch available on the web as well as on mobile devices, Roku boxes and Xbox 360 gaming consoles."  New technology for a new audience.

While Vevo might like to offer its TV channel to cable operators, operators will most likely be resistant to adding it to their line-ups as it competes with them on the over the top platforms (OTT).  That issue changes of course should Vevo TV become more popular than MTV and other cable music services and cable operators need it to compete.  But by then, the damage may be done as more and more households add OTT devices like Roku, XBox, Apple TV, and others into their home.  By then the cable box becomes less relevant.  Cable could instead bypass this obstacle by opening up their cable box to the web and these services. Still it may be too late as households become more accustomed to using their online boxes for programming. And that is a competitive threat.

For online channels watching this Vevo experiment, their success with an online TV channel may just be the push for them to also release their 24/7 channels as well.  And for services like Roku and XBox that are aggregating online content, it could prove a winning formula to competing for share of the cable household.