The first YouTube music awards – it could have been worse, and I hope this is just the beginning!
But throughout the show, and just a few minutes after the LIVE airing, it seems like most people did not quite get it.
The show was live, and it did have the feel that anything could happen, swear words and all, but unfortunately the unexpected came across as just unorganized. If your going to make it free form and live, at least give the hosts headphone mics! One of the most painful moments for me was watching the hosts try to find a place to hold the handheld mikes while searching through cakes for the winners, climbing ladders and uncovering zombie girls. All not easy to do with one hand!
THE GOOD:
- Combining mainstream and YouTube grassroots artists is a great idea and the first disruptive step to acknowledging YouTubers popularity and cultural influence.
- Performances were inspired and innovative
- Live live via the google suite of apps and web sites
- Ridiculously ambitious
- New type of creativity for a live broadcast generated some impressive moments. like bringing Youtube elements of interactive videos to live tv moments ( the choose your own adventure live segment was interesting even if it didn’t quite play out). Suprised I didn’t see a live annotation walking around!
- YouTube did get every major music brand to cover the awards live, including MTV
THE BAD
- The hosts just didn’t work. They looked confused, weren’t that funny, and didn’t rise to the unscripted nature of the show.
- Unorganized turned into bad TV
- Sometimes hard to tell who won and announcing winners was anticlimactic for some reason. The insanity of the show took away the winning moment for Artists.
- Ridiculously ambitious
- Not enough Artists
- Couldn’t feel the fans, I could hardly hear them cheer!
All in all – YouTube succeeded in getting me to care, tune in, and hope they try it again!
