MTV, HP Tool ‘Engine Room’ for TV and Web
MTV and Hewlett-Packard are debuting a short-form reality series on air and online next week, featuring a group of PC-savvy competitors vying for a shot at big money in the latest form of branded entertainment.
“Engine Room” will have a seven-episode run starting Monday on MTV and mtvU, its digital channel aimed at college students, with each episode running five to seven minutes. The 16 competitors, divvied into four teams work exclusively on HP computers and other HP hardware to demonstrate their digital skills for a $400,000 team prize. The team that scores the most points in each episode gets to program content for MTV’s 44-foot HD screen Times Square for one night.
It’s one of several short-form multi-platform entertainment series MTV will be introducing in the next several months. Ford is sponsoring an upcoming mtvU reality series this fall called “College 500,” that features two teams of college students in a cross-country road race driving—you guessed it—Ford vehicles.
Ford, General Motors, Microsoft and Yahoo have all previously worked with mtvU on branded entertainment projects.
“It’s a new way of thinking about creative and it’s an important element of our networks because it represents a new way of partnering with our sponsors to create compelling programming,” said Ross Martin, mtvU senior vice president of programming.
MTV currently has several new projects in development with some of those same partners, according to Martin.
MTV’s “Engine Room” Web site, at www.mtvengineroom.com has become a functional clearinghouse of more than 2,000 resumes for young artists seeking gigs worldwide, who applied to make the show.
The four teams, ostensibly representing Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia-Pacific, will face challenges in animation, filmmaking, sound mixing and Web and graphic design. A diverse panel of experts sifted through 20,000 art submissions from 122 countries for a shot at competing in “Engine Room.” Among the more than 20 experts: Katherine Brinson, assistant curator at the Guggenheim Museum, Hip Hop artist Aesop Rock, Tattoo artist Oliver Peck, Lovefoxxx, lead singer of Brazilian Indie-electro band Cansei de Ser Sexy and Pete Conolly, art director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners.
HP developed the concept with its agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners. They approached MTV, which executed it.
Moby and British indie-pop band the Ting Tings will appear in the series that will be aired on MTV channels globally and also streamed in nine languages at www.mtvengineroom.com. “Engine Room” follows an MTV dating series, “Meet or Delete,” comprising short-form episodes online and one-hour specials on MTV that was sponsored by HP over the last two years.
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