Reality, a moving target at MTV

At MTV, reality has always been a moving target. Sixteen years ago, the network heralded the era of reality television with "The Real World." Three years ago, it pushed the genre further with "Laguna Beach: The Real OC," in which the mundane lives of a clique of pretty teenagers were presented in a way that appeared scripted and dramatic.

Now the cable channel aims to push the boundaries of false reality one step further. This week, MTV will introduce Virtual Laguna Beach, an online service in which fans of the program can immerse themselves - or at least can immerse digitized, three-dimensional characters, called avatars, that they control - in virtual versions of the show's familiar seaside hangouts. "You can not only watch TV, but now you can actually live it," Van Toffler, the president of the MTV Networks Music, Film and Logo Group, said in an interview.

Wednesday's introduction of Virtual Laguna Beach is the first of three virtual worlds that MTV plans over the next year as part of an effort to steal a march on popular Web sites like MySpace and YouTube that have diverted the attention of the MTV audience.

Virtual Laguna Beach will be making its debut two weeks after the abrupt dismissal of Tom Freston as chief executive of Viacom, MTV Networks' parent. One reason cited by Viacom's chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, for replacing Mr. Freston was that the company had not been aggressive enough in its online expansion. Judy McGrath, the chief executive of MTV Networks, said the timing with the Web site was unrelated to Viacom's corporate turmoil.

"As brilliant as we are, I don't even think we could pull this off in a week," Ms. McGrath remarked yesterday.

Vertual words

Of the two other virtual worlds planned, VMTV is a music destination where visitors can club-hop among hip neighbourhoods, buy music, watch videos, sing karaoke or even start their own bands. The third virtual destination, LogoWorld, an offshoot of Logo, the gay and lesbian cable channel, will be designed entirely by its participants.

While avatars and virtual communities are a puzzling concept to many people over, say, 35, they are old hat to players of video games and to young people accustomed to revealing details of their lives online through social networking Web sites. Avatar-based social Web sites like Sims Online, Second Life and There.com have attracted hundreds of thousands of users.

They are not so much games as three-dimensional chat rooms where you can simulate just about anything else that can be done in the - pardon the expression - real world. But the network, which has pushed the boundaries of good taste on television, is restricting at least one teenage impulse.

"The worst thing they can do is kiss - and it's Catholic school kissing," said Matt Bostwick, an MTV senior vice president. "The lips touch, but the bodies don't."

One of the appeals of virtual worlds for MTV is the possibility that advertising can spill over into the real one. Visitors might buy a digital outfit for parties using currency they earned watching an infomercial or checking out a new product for an MTV advertiser.

Then, they might decide that they would like to buy the same outfit for their offline selves, and, with a few clicks of the mouse and some real dollars, have one shipped to their home. In trial form, Virtual Laguna Beach has advertising relationships with brands including Cingular, Pepsi-Cola, Secret and another Viacom company, Paramount.

Of course, that means that both MTV and its advertisers must be prepared for unintended consequences, like having the fans run roughshod over the show's locations. "Our content is a starting point for them, not an ending point," said Jeffrey B. Yapp, an MTV Networks executive who helped oversee the project. "There's been a lot of discussion about letting go."

MTV executives declined to say how much they invested in Virtual Laguna Beach, but they described it as more than an episode of the show but far less than a season. They also did not say how much revenue they expected from the venture, but said they viewed it as an experiment that could lead to new sales opportunities.

For instance, residents of Virtual Laguna Beach will have the opportunity later this fall to get a virtual car and a virtual house for a gold membership fee of $4.99 a month. For $5.99, a platinum membership will get them status: V.I.P. access to nightclubs and other events to be staged "in world."

Mr. Toffler said he first became familiar with avatars when MTV looked at introducing its first Web site a decade or so ago: an early demonstration featured avatars of fish but, he recalled, they did not work. When he was presented with the idea of building virtual worlds around MTV properties in April, he said the idea scared him. Then he added, "Please go build it."

To design Virtual Laguna Beach and the other forthcoming 3-D online communities, MTV enlisted Makena Technologies, the creator of There.com. Henry Jenkins, a professor at M.I.T. and the author of "Convergence Culture," said such virtual communities were a natural next step for mainstream media companies seeking to deepen their connections to fans.

He said "Laguna Beach" was an interesting choice for the first venture because it had a heavily female audience and because the show itself was such a blur of real, unreal and sort of real. "It's just layer upon layer of reality and fiction," Mr. Jenkins said.

Some 22,000 people, drawn from a pool of 600,000 "Laguna Beach" watchers who registered for fan clubs on other MTV Web sites, signed up to participate in the test phase of Virtual Laguna Beach.

Several hundred of those are designated as volunteer "lifeguards" who greet new arrivals online. Cast members from the television show's three seasons are not part of the planned online experience, although they could come as avatars of their own making.

Online controlling

Visiting Virtual Laguna Beach requires registering at the Web site, www.vlb.mtv.com, and downloading a piece of software. The first step is designing your avatar - which can be made to look as much like or unlike your actual self as you wish. During a demonstration last week at MTV, Mr. Bostwick played the role of an avatar named Violet Jade whom he configured - scrolling through an extensive menu of eye shapes, hair colors, skin tones and so on - to look like a typical character on the show: blond, tan and scantily clad.

Ms. McGrath said the company's push into virtual worlds based on its brands was part of a strategy to move a generation ahead of what media rivals were doing online. (Part of Mr. Redstone's concern was that the company had been regarded as slow to establish itself in areas like online video and social networking.) While many movies and TV shows have video games built around them, these are the first attempts at 3-D online communities.

"MTV speaks uniquely to a group of people who are endlessly fascinated with watching themselves," she said.

(NEWYORK TIMES)