So here's the thing. I watched the VMA's on Thursday. They were ok... some of the star parings were funny... and the music and the staging was - as always - a big spectacle.

I was struck by a few things.

First, i watched - my 16 year old son didn't. Hmmm.

Second, on air there was an endless push to the web. A visit backstage to the MTV web site "overdrive", promo's that pushed MTV on computers, cell phones, etc. And promo's pushing on line voting for audience awards.

Said a recent Wall Street Journal;

"MTV Overdrive," a free video Web site featuring music videos, news and MTV's hit programming, attracts fewer than four million unique visitors a month, a small fraction of MTV's 82 million monthly U.S. television viewers. More worrisome: MTV's Web sites are being whipped by rivals such as MySpace, the new home of the MTV generation. MySpace gets nearly 55 million unique visitors in the U.S. a month. YouTube, a fast-growing video Web site, draws 16 million."

So it looks as if the MTV audience has already found new places to hang out, and now they're trying to figure out how to remain cool, boost thier TV audience, and push their viewers to the web. The truth is - they're facing the same issues that AOL is facing in trying to turn their dial up customers into free web users.

The audience has moved, and bringing them back to legacy brands won't be easy.

That said - MTV has a strong creative team and a huge brand, so it isn't impossible. But when i think of my son, who actively doens't watch MTV - i'm not sure how they'll get him back.