JUDY MCGRATH believes that “change has to be in everyone’s DNA, personally and professionally.” As the chief executive of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, an American media group, she was still sad to see one of MTV’s longest-running programmes, “Total Request Live”, come to an end this week. The ten-year-old television show, which played music videos, was an MTV staple. But in recent years the show began to seem outdated, given that viewers could easily find the same videos online. On November 16th Ms McGrath joined celebrities and MTV staff at the firm’s Times Square studio for the show’s nostalgic finale—a three-hour long tribute, in effect, to MTV’s old way of doing things. Ms McGrath’s job is to make sure that MTV continues to find new ways of doing things.

The company where she has spent her career is no stranger to change. MTV Networks oversees 150 television channels, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, and 390 websites. The firm began in 1981 as a channel that screened music videos and has since evolved into one of America’s most powerful media companies. It has emerged as the standard-bearer for popular culture. It continues to show music videos, but these days MTV Networks also offers comedy, reality television, children’s programmes, cartoons, online virtual worlds and video games.

Ms McGrath grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in a family that loved jazz, and she aspired to write about music for Rolling Stone magazine. After graduating from college she moved to New York in 1978 and got a job at Mademoiselle, a now-defunct women’s magazine. She started off typing recipes, even though she couldn’t cook. After making a mistake in one of the recipes and receiving complaints from bewildered readers, she switched to writing about fashion and parties.

Her experience working for women’s magazines brought her closer to music, but never to Rolling Stone. Via several female colleagues at Condй Nast, to whom she refers as the “old girl network”, she heard about a small, innovative start-up that had just launched, called MTV. At the time it consisted of a single cable channel available only in New Jersey. Ms McGrath knew nothing about television, but she found the concept “artful and fascinating, and it was also irresistible”. Bob Pittman, MTV’s founder, was impressed by her creativity and sensed her “capacity to create and let it go”, he says, which he thought would be essential to keep the company innovative and fresh. He hired her as a copywriter, and she began her ascent through the ranks of the company. During her “long, slow crawl to the top”, as she puts it, Ms McGrath focused on attracting talent and helping to select creative programming. Having come of age in the 1970s, she also urged MTV to take on more social campaigns, such as “Choose or Lose”, which encouraged young people to vote.

Since becoming chief executive in 2004, Ms McGrath has pushed the company to grow in new ways. She has focused on international expansion, raising the number of countries that receive MTV’s television programming to 162. (Programmes are broadcast in 33 languages.) She has also tried to diversify MTV’s sources of revenue. Under her leadership, the company has paid more attention to designing and selling consumer products, such as toys and clothing, which tie into its shows. And she recognised the growth potential of video games. In 2006 MTV Networks bought Harmonix, a maker of such games; the partnership yielded “Rock Band”, a hit to the tune of 7m copies. Another acquisition, of Atom Entertainment, brought AddictingGames.com, a “casual gaming” website, under MTV Networks’ umbrella.

MTV knows its mainly young audience well, but it is also battling to keep their attention. The people to whom MTV has always appealed are the same people who now spend their time on MySpace and Facebook and watch free video-clips on YouTube. Ms McGrath describes MTV Networks’ main audience as the “on-demand generation”—young people who are used to getting the content they want, whenever they want it. In the past few years MTV Networks has had to compete with the internet’s copious offerings in order to keep viewers loyal and retain advertisers. The company has expanded its digital offerings considerably over the years, but will MTV be able to change quickly enough to fit its customers’ tastes and online habits?

The long and winding road

Ms McGrath knows that she needs to wage a war on two fronts: one for viewers, another for advertisers. On the advertising front, she admits that “a big part of our future is working differently with advertisers and distributors and maximising interesting ways to involve them.” This may mean being more flexible when it comes to control over content on the web. In 2007 MTV’s parent company, Viacom, sued Google (the owner of YouTube) for $1 billion for copyright infringement, complaining that it was profiting from Viacom’s content, uploaded by YouTube users. Yet this month MTV Networks struck an innovative deal with MySpace, which also allows its users to upload video clips. Technology provided by Auditude will identify clips on MySpace belonging to MTV Networks and overlay advertising on them; MySpace and MTV will split the resulting revenue. This may signal that MTV is becoming more creative in its dealings with its online rivals.

“I think the major strategy is that you have to be open and flexible, and probably change it every day,” says Ms McGrath. Now she must decide how much change to pursue in the future. She plans to expand more into digital content, seek further international growth and continue to develop new products. Next year MTV Networks will release a new “Rock Band”-style game, featuring music by the Beatles. This shows that MTV is not about to abandon its roots—the promotion of music through new media. But as the cancellation of “Total Request Live” demonstrates, Ms McGrath is not afraid to ring the changes.