MTV doesn’t care about 15% of their market

In the never ending quest to garner eyeballs you’d think that consumer-oriented companies would do whatever it takes to get the greatest number of page hits possible and build a loyal audience. That’s what you’d think …

And then there’s MTV. You know those bizarre journeys you take following links because you forget to stop at the point you really should have? Well, that’s how I wound up on MTV’s Overdrive site.

Much to my surprise, I was presented with: “Detecting Browser… WE”RE SORRY! PC Users with Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox: you need to run Internet Explorer to use MTV Overdrive.”I was, of course, running Firefox 1.5. Now let’s think about this for a moment. Is this a good strategy when it comes to building an audience?I checked in with my old friend, marketing wunderkind Jim Sterne who pointed out:

As of Nov 2, 2005 from Onestat: The most popular browsers on the web are:

1. Microsoft IE 85.45 %

2. Mozilla Firefox 11.51 %

3. Apple Safari 1.75 %

4. Netscape 0.26 %

5. Opera 0.77 %

The most popular browsers in the USA are:

1. Microsoft IE 80.73 %

2. Mozilla Firefox 14.07 %

3. Apple Safari 3.55 %

4. Netscape 0.76 % 5. Opera

MTV doesn’t care about 12% of surfers? or 15% in the US? Interesting.

So, to what could we attribute such negligence on the part of MTV? Ignorance? Hardly, considering that this isn’t a new medium. Oversight? Hard to believe. Arrogance? Seems unlikely. Some kind of deal with the devil? Hummmm.

Ignoring such a large chunk of the market seems remarkable in the light of the competition for attention in the market that MTV addresses — or at least, tries to address.

Given that Firefox’s market share is growing I wonder how long such a bad marketing decision can last?