March 28, 2024

MTV Drops ‘Choose or Lose’ Campaign Season Slogan

The youth cable channel’s coverage will be labeled “Power of 12,” a nod to both the election year and the notion that 18- to 29-year-olds have a lot of political power if they choose to wield it.

The name change is, in part, a statement about the cynical mood of the youth voting bloc. While young people turned out in unusually high numbers to support Barack Obama in 2008, MTV’s research into “Choose or Lose” found that many felt they had lost anyway.

“They were so passionate,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the president of MTV. “And then they hit this wall of the economy.”

The “Power” campaign, to be announced on Monday, implies that choosing is not all that matters. “Voting is one step in the process — just one step,” Mr. Friedman said. “The question for this generation is, they’ve got this power, will they exert it?”

For MTV, a unit of Viacom, presidential election cycles provide opportunities to show off the channel’s relevance to its youthful demographic and motivate young people to take action.

The “Choose or Lose” campaign started in 1992. That year, at a town hall symposium sponsored by the channel, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton was asked whether he had ever tried marijuana and he famously replied, “I didn’t inhale.” The campaign has used the “Choose or Lose” label ever since.

There have been interviews, voter registration drives, news reports, online chats and parties. On the eve of election day in 2008, for instance, MTV showed a 30-minute question-and-answer session with Mr. Obama.

But this year, staff members at MTV’s initial meeting about the coming elections agreed that a name change was required.

“We felt like it no longer truly represented the complexity and the issues that face our audience,” Mr. Friedman said.

Young people, he said, are generally disillusioned about the present and about politics, yet still hopeful about the future. “It is almost a topic they’d rather not think about,” he said.

A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 18- to 29-year-olds were backing Mr. Obama more than any other demographic group, yet they were also paying less attention to the campaign than any other.

The first televised piece of “Power of 12” will be a short MTV News documentary starring Andrew Jenks, a 25-year-old filmmaker, meeting the Republican candidates. Mr. Jenks will be back out on the trail in January for the Iowa caucuses.

“For the candidates, one of my big questions is, ‘How are you really understanding what young people are going through?’ ” Mr. Jenks said in an interview by phone on Sunday.

Mr. Jenks and Sway Calloway, an MTV News correspondent, will be the main reporters for the channel for this election cycle.

Early next year, the channel plans to show a documentary, “When I Was 22,” about the candidates at a younger age. But its campaign coverage will exist more robustly online, on a Web site that promotes voter registration and that will feature a fantasy election game.

Like fantasy football, it will reward and penalize participants for the performance of their candidates for the presidency and for Congressional seats.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c974482656c176e025901eda08f26e89

Tepco Quells Push by Shareholders to End Nuclear Program

The management of the operating company, Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, as it is known, also pushed through the appointment of 17 board members, including the reappointment of its 71-year-old chairman, raising questions about the extent of the overhaul that the company promised after the nuclear disaster.

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for the trouble and fear that we have brought to our shareholders, and to society,” the chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said at the shareholders’ meeting at a tightly guarded Tokyo hotel.

“We will do our utmost to bring the accident to a resolution and to work toward our mission of providing a stable source of electricity,” he said.

Some investors refused to be placated. “Go jump into a reactor and die!” one elderly man shouted at the row of executives, before being escorted out by attendants.

At one point, when Mr. Katsumata tried to wrap up a question-and-answer session, angry shareholders rushed toward the stage. The session continued.

With her voice shaking, a woman told board members that they were unfit to lead the company. She said the company had ignored warnings about the dangers of nuclear power. “Shame on you!” she cried. “You should all be sacked.”

Tokyo Electric has been fighting for its survival since the March 11 quake and tsunami ravaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, about 140 miles north of Tokyo, leading to hydrogen explosions and releases of radioactive material in the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

At least 80,000 people in northeastern Japan have fled their homes, and farmers and fishermen in the area have had to abandon their livelihoods. Factories within a 20-kilometer evacuation zone have had to move or close.

Tokyo Electric could face as much as 11 trillion yen, or $136 billion, in compensation claims, analysts have estimated. The cost of dismantling the Fukushima Daiichi plant could reach an additional 20 trillion yen, according to the Japan Center for Economic Research.

The dismal forecasts have cast a dark cloud on the financial health of Japan’s largest utility, a company with strong links to government that has dominated the country’s power industry for decades. Last week, Moody’s cut Tokyo Electric’s credit rating to junk status, after a similar move by Standard Poor’s last month. Tokyo Electric shares have plunged more than 80 percent since the earthquake.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said that the government should provide a safety net for Tokyo Electric, to keep the company afloat while it pays damage claims. Japan is considering setting aside about 230 billion yen from a planned 2 trillion yen supplementary budget to help Tokyo Electric, according to Bloomberg News.

Mr. Kan has been eager to hold Tokyo Electric accountable and to avoid having to dip into public money. But he also wants the company to avoid bankruptcy, which would bring chaos to the stock and credit markets.

The company had about 933,000 shareholders at the end of March. At that time, financial institutions held about 30 percent of Tokyo Electric shares, while other corporations had 5 percent. Individual investors held about 44 percent, while overseas investors held 17 percent.

Nevertheless, many analysts have underscored the need for change at Tokyo Electric. “A fundamental structural overhaul is needed at the board level to enable Tepco to rebuild its reputation and recover financially,” Glass Lewis, a United States company that advises institutional investors, said in a report before the shareholder meeting.

Individual investors at the meeting on Tuesday aired similar demands.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=097d79d2a9e7617b3ff2b7d86a40e736