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This Sunday, MTV Networks will air, uninterrupted, a 90-minute special featuring previously recorded performances by Dave Matthews and Missy Elliott from the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs with Alicia Keys at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town, South Africa.
The special is part of MTV's fourth annual "Staying Alive" World AIDS Day campaign, which featured George Michael, Ricky Martin and Combs during the last three years, respectively. This year's promotion is MTV's largest to date, offering free programming -- with grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Charitable Foundation -- to broadcasters across the globe, beaming its messages of safer sex and AIDS awareness to a possible 377 million homes in Asia, South Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Russia.
In other words, MTV has the potential to reach more than 2 billion people this World AIDS Day with its directive that AIDS does not discriminate and that being informed about the disease does not carry a negative stigma.
And the messages couldn't come at a more crucial time.
The World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS released data showing that five million people have become infected with HIV in 2002, with 3.5 million living in sub-Saharan Africa.
"As the U.S. and other wealthy nations focus on fighting terrorism, we must not concede defeat to the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of all recorded time," said Dr. Seth Berkeley, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).
To date, more than 60 million people around the globe have been infected with HIV, with nearly 25 million of those people already succumbing to the disease since AIDS claimed its first victim more than 20 years ago. MTV hopes to broaden the scope of the seriousness of the global AIDS crisis by speaking directly to its audience of mainly 15- to 24-year-olds, the age group that makes up 50 percent of all new HIV infections.
"We're here to raise awareness through the world about the still growing epidemic here," P. Diddy told a crowd in Cape Town before his performance on Nov. 23. "I don't think you see enough of this story in your face. There are millions and millions of people dying ? once you know about it, you are almost an accessory to the genocide -- if you don't do anything about it."
To aid the effort, Viacom, MTV's parent company, teamed with the Kaiser Family Foundation to launch a global awareness campaign across all its brands, including CBS, MTV, BET, UPN, Showtime, Paramount, TNN and Simon & Schuster publishing company. The Jan. 3, 2003, kick-off will feature AIDS awareness advertising at the tune of $120 million through media including public service announcements, outdoor advertising, TV and radio programming.
Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for GLAAD, praised the work of Viacom and MTV but added that those efforts are only part of what's needed to get people to realize that HIV is still a very serious threat.
"American television programmers, frankly, are not in (young people's) faces enough about what it means to live with AIDS and HIV," Seomin said. "We see images of people in this country who are living with the disease who look like models ? the only way (for MTV) to get through to the viewers is to show the horrors of the disease. We're puritans. We can't show some of the basics about safe sex because it's too embarrassing or too dirty."