SYDNEY (AAP)

Smaller screens and shorter attention spans will change the way media groups make their content, MTV's Australian boss says as the music channel prepares to rev up its internet offering.Twenty-six years after the music network hit US televisions with its first clip, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, the cable TV icon is looking to ensure the boom in web content doesn't spell its slide into irrelevance.

MTV Australia launches a free access broadband channel next month, following similar moves by the network's North American and European operations last year.The premium web service, called Overdrive, will stream clips, news, live music, movies and content from Australia and overseas through an embedded player on its website.The channel also will stream to 3G mobile phone services through local carriers.MTV Australia managing director David Sibley expects traffic to the network's Overdrive site - pitched primarily at 16 to 29-year-olds - to double within the next six months."The consumer now expects to be able to digest content in different places and obviously there's been a lot of success in the digital field in serving up content of varying qualities to consumers," Mr Sibley said.

MTV is considered one of the first platforms to deliver content in bite-sized chunks with its original service in 1981 largely featuring a run of four minute video clips, essentially a televised version of Top 40 radio.Some sociologists in the 1980s and 1990s blamed the service for rearing an apathetic class of youths with very short-attention spans, popularly known as the MTV Generation.Mr Sibley said the current generation of viewers were demanding even shorter content and more of it."The time that you will use a mobile is likely to be shorter than if you're sitting there watching the screen," he said."Certainly at the moment, people want to catch up with a show rather than watch a half hour show."

Most of the items on Overdrive will last from 30 seconds to about three minutes and will be preceded by commercials, a feature that will help to ensure free access to the service.Mr Sibley said consumers looked at broadcast entertainment in very different ways to how they did a generation ago.Studios now are not only cropping the run-time of their items but are also making their visuals simpler with more close-up shots to better suit the mobile screen.

MTV's move to boost web content comes as competition from sites such as YouTube, a champion of video-on-demand, increases.So has internet killed the MTV video jockey?Mr Sibley doesn't think so."It's democratising the access to video," he said."There's a lot of debate about how money is being made by content owners but I think that will resolve itself."Companies like ourselves will capitalise on the internet space as opposed to monetising our content." (28/02/2007 09:57:03 PM)