MTV is trying to make Logo’s New Now Next Awards a social media dynamo akin to its own youth-driven Video Music Awards.
For the fourth year of the New Now Next Awards, which airs Monday on Logo, the MTV and VH1 sister network will implement a variety of social TV features new to the show, including the Verizon Wireless-sponsored Twitter Tracker, which visualizes the Twitter conversation around the show.
The show, which took place last Thursday and features awards such as "Next Mega Star" and "Beyond Style," airs Monday after “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“We try to give the show an outrageous slant – outrageous characters from high and low pop culture,” Dan Sacher, VP of Digital for VH1 and Logo, told TheWrap. “The show has been building and this year we wanted to introduce several social TV first initiatives.”
Other social initiatives include a red carpet live stream, the opportunity to win GetGlue badges and the now-wrapped Twitter voting.
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The Twitter Tracker, which will run on Logo's website as the show airs Monday, reveals which presenters, nominees and attendees are getting talked about most on Twitter, and what many of those tweets say. Nominees this year include Hollywood up-and-comers like Elizabeth Olsen and Josh Hutcherson, as well as rising musicians including Fun and Azealia Banks.
MTV has used the tracker with the VMAs. According to Trendrr, which tracks social activity around television, the VMAs were 2011's second most-social tentpole event after the royal wedding.
Sacher said that the New Now Next Awards are akin to the VMAs for Logo, MTV’s smaller network that is trying to push into the mainstream. At the moment, it is in about 50 million homes, and this past year has been its best yet.
"The larger brand message of Logo is that it's a forward-looking network with a unique take on pop culture," Morgan Greco, the network's director of marketing, told TheWrap.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which will lead-in to the awards, is the network’s most successful show to date, and Greco said that it registers a trending topic on Twitter every Monday as it airs.
Logo executives are hoping that nominees like Channing Tatum and Jessica Lange can do the same for the awards show.