Celebrity trumps talent at VMAs

It just seems like if you're a celebrity, you can assume you're on TV all the time," Jerry Seinfeld says. "Everything is televised at this point on someone's phone or iPod or something.

"When I get out of bed in the morning, I just assume I'm on TV," the comedian told reporters in a recent teleconference with Chris Rock to promote The Comedy Festival. "I just tuck my shirt in and I try to conduct myself accordingly."

MTV assumed as much during last weekend's Video Music Awards. But you can bet the cable channel was hoping for something more untucked when it solicited an "Army of Journalists" to aim cell phones at the VMA weekend.

To quote directly from the MTV folks: "Viewers who see a celebrity poolside, shopping or stepping out of a limo are encouraged to whip out their cell phone or digital camera and capture the scene. They can also blog about it from their mobile phone (Twitter-ing, as it is called)."

Seinfeld, by the way, sides with us Luddites who aren't atwitter. "The thing that amazes me is, I can't believe people can work their phones that fast to get these things."

Anyway, the "journalism" is posted at yourhere.mtv.com. The network was hoping for "a rich tapestry of coverage that weaves viewers between all platforms (and) validates their diverse points of view."

But what about Britney's booty?

The big irony is that the good stuff was on the old-fashioned broadcast version of the show. Nothing offstage generated the buzz of the slo-mo, belly-roll Britney boogie that kicked off the circus. If only the girl had been smart enough to claim it was all a sendup; that she'd had it with celebrity obsession and the lip-sync era of pop and was taking herself out of the game.

In effect, that may have been what she did. Still, it's not too late to remember the VMAs as perhaps the moment when we officially traded "talent" for "celebrity."

The show drew its best ratings in years with a new format that deconstructed the traditional awards show, letting us pretend we were eavesdropping on underage drinking and other salacious VIP-suite action throughout the Palms.

Rock bands who dared to really play their instruments competed for camera time with shots of fans hovering inches from their faces. An overhead, surveillance-style view of the Kid Rock-Tommy Lee dust-up is on MTV's Web site, equally billed alongside the show's performance clips.

All last week I waited for the nation's new No. 1 hit. No, not Britney's dumb song, but a backstage video that might have proven an unattributed New York Post claim that Britters showed up for rehearsals with a frozen margarita in hand.

That's her real appeal in this new frontier of show business.

Mike Weatherford's entertainment column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 383-0288 or e-mail him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.