mtvU detailed its on-air, online, mobile and on-campus programming for this spring.
MTV Networks’ 24-hour college service said it is now available on more than 80% of four-year universities nationwide.
The network’s efforts will include:
• Best Film on Campus, which it described as “a new online farm system for top student filmmakers,” through which a dedicated Web site will allow them the opportunity to showcase their work. The initiative will lead to the naming of the Best Filmmaker on Campus, where the top five student filmmakers will have their work featured at the Sixth Annual Tribeca Film Festival April 25-May 6 in New York.
• Mary J. Blige, Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, Nelly Furtado and Max Bemis of Say Anything will appear in Half of Us mental-health-related specials and “document their personal struggles with serious mental-health issues.”
• mtvU and The Fulbright Program will search for up to four Fulbright-mtvU Fellows, who will “travel abroad for a year and study how music can serve as a global force for mutual understanding.”
• New series The Ronnie Day Project will be entirely shot, directed and produced by college students and “craft a visual narrative of the singer’s debut album.”
• mtvU will continue its Freshmen Five initiative, which “names the five on-the-verge artists” and lets those artists take control of all of its platforms.
• The network will also continue its Best Music on Campus online initiative, which gives unsigned college acts the opportunity to further their careers and moves toward the Artist of the Year competition in late March.
• mtvU will continue to award student-development deals to students such as Mark Leung, whose Mark Leung's Crazy Computer Bug clip has been viewed more than 6.8 million times on YouTube.
• Finally, the week of March 12, the network will debut Leak Week, offering the first chance to hear releases from artists including El-P (I'll Sleep When You're Dead), Ted Leo + the Pharmacists (Living with the Living) and J Dilla (Ruff Draft).
