| NEWS 05.01.07 9:00 PM |
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| MTV Awards May Head to Las Vegas |
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FROM NEW YORK After bringing the MTV Video Music Awards back to their original home in New York last year, it looks like MTV is taking the show back on the road. According to several entertainment and hospitality industry sources, the cable network is looking to hold the 2007 show in Las Vegas, but has yet to sign a contract with a specific venue.
“If it’s not a done deal yet, it’s something they’re strongly considering,” a Las Vegas entertainment industry source told us last week. He heard the news from people inside Viacom, MTV’s parent company, and said that although he’s not a betting man—har, har—he would put money on the awards shenanigans taking place in Nevada.
The interest in Las Vegas has been a not-so-well-kept secret among
people with ties to MTV, the VMAs, and the brands that typically host
after-parties. But the exact location has been harder to determine. One
entertainment industry source claimed to have heard that the network is
close to signing with the Palms. The most obvious venue for the
ceremony within that casino and resort complex is the Pearl, a
multimillion-dollar concert space that opened in March with room for
2,500 people. The Pearl has three seating levels (each with its own bar
and bathroom facilities), as well as 18 private and semiprivate
skyboxes. On Monday a spokesperson for the Palms declined to comment on
the situation.
New York, which has hosted the show 13 times, appears to be out of the
running for this year’s incarnation. Representatives at Radio City
Music Hall, the ceremony’s first and most frequent venue, and the
Metropolitan Opera House, which hosted the VMAs in 1999 and 2001, said
they were not in talks with MTV for this year’s event. If Las Vegas
venue negotiations fall through, an entertainment industry source said
he expects the show to return to Los Angeles, which has also housed the
production several times and offers MTV easy access to talent and TV
production needs. Los Angeles and Las Vegas are both expected to be
less expensive for the network than New York.
MTV has not made any official announcements. A message left with its PR
department and on Monday afternoon was not returned, and an MTV
Networks event executive had no comment.
A possible move to Las Vegas is seen by some as an attempt to inject
some excitement to the proceedings and bring back the broadcast’s
dwindling ratings, although a move to Miami in 2004 and 2005 did little
to retain television audiences. Last year’s ratings were down 28 percent,
from 8 million viewers to 5.77 million the year before, although the
show is still a considerable draw for younger viewers. The show once
drew 12 million viewers.
Maybe a scheduling shift will help? Several sources say the awards will
also move the date of the ceremony back to its original timing in
September. The show was always held during the first two weeks of that
month—most often on the Thursday after Labor Day—until 2002, when MTV
moved it to late August to keep it away from the first anniversary of
the September 11 terrorist attacks. The awards have taken place in the
last week of August since then.
One source inside MTV said the event is tentatively scheduled for
Sunday, September 9. The awards’ only other Sunday slots have been
during their stints in Miami in 2004 and 2005.
That date would also put the show exactly a week before the September 16 broadcast of the Primetime Emmy awards in Los Angeles—meaning a lot of gift-suite organizers might have a busy couple of weeks.
—Chad Kaydo, with additional reporting by Lauren Bienvenue & Courtney Thompson
RELATED TOPICS
MTV, MTV Video Music Awards
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