Doug and I did a little liveblog of the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards last night, and we both had a confession - we hadn't watched the MTV Video Music Awards in a long time. Me because I gave up cable a few years ago, and who knows why Doug hasn't watched it. Too cool, I guess.
So it was an interesting experience seeing the awards show that I had really enjoyed in late middle school/early high school. MTV always put on a really entertaining show, according to my memory, but now I'm watching as someone who has an interest in the music video industry, and the experience from that perspective is a lot different.
MTV segments out the awards into two categories: The normal awards (Best Pop Video, etc.) and the "Professional Categories" (Best Editing, etc.). These are clearly marked out on the VMA individual award categories pages, but are just lumped together everywhere else, including the overall categories page. Clearly they want to set aside the pro categories in the sense that less people are interested in them, but still keep this ostensibly an award show for music videos.
It's perfectly understandable that MTV doesn't want "Best Editing" or "Best Cinematography" awards given out during the main show. It's mostly for entertainment, and the VMAs aren't the Oscars. The problem is MTV was terrible last night about letting people know when/where they can find out about the VMA Pro category winners. After the show ended, no MTV outlets on Twitter or anywhere else had any information on who won the Professional awards. In some cases, I saw tweets from nominees and bands wondering what the outcomes of those categories were.
It's not like people didn't want to know either, or that these categories were some inside baseball items only for the most hardcore. Frank Ocean fans will definitely want know if he and Nabil Elderkin got an award (they didn't, but there are worse things than losing to Romain Gavras). Artists have fans, and even if they may not know who directed, edited, or shot a video off the top of their heads, they'll support them and want to see them win a VMA.
To top it off, when @MTVPress tweeted the list of the Pro category winners, it was to this page, which doesn't even have the names of the winners of the Pro categories, just the video. So, best direction just goes to "M.I.A. - Bad Girls", unless you know who directed it yourself.
On the entertainment side, I think most are agreeing that last night's show was a bit of a dud. That's a shame for an awards show that's had so many great outings over the last few decades, but it happens. However, it's clear now that whatever MTV's game plan is for their awards franchise, celebrating the music video industry through Professional awards is not part of it.
