MTV is reviving mid-2000s hit My Super Sweet 16 with the help of a modern day social network.
The cable net has partnered with Musical.ly, an app for creating and sharing short, looping videos set to popular music, to cast an upcoming episode of the forthcoming series.
Beginning Monday, Musical.ly users -- known as "musers" -- can submit entry videos on the app using the hashtag #MySuperSweetAudition for the chance to be featured in a future episode. Musical.ly and MTV will review the videos and select some of their creators to move onto a second round with My Super Sweet 16's producers.
This is the first time that MTV will use a mobile app to audition and cast one of its shows. But it's not the first time that MTV has worked with Musical.ly. The network was early to join Musical.ly and has become the first brand to pass 1 million fans on the platform. Last summer it teamed with the app for a campaign for the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in which musers could vote for one of the 10 nominees for the Song of the Summer award by creating a video using that song. Over 900,000 videos were created.
"MTV's Musical.ly initiatives for the past year have helped build one of the most direct fan engagement programs on the platform," said MTV, VH1 and Logo president Chris McCarthy. "The casting for My Super Sweet 16 is just the beginning of engaging the muser audience more deeply into current and future MTV programming."
The companies are also currently working together on original programming that will debut on Musical.ly later this year.
"There's a huge overlap between the people they want to reach and that we are reaching right now," says Alex Hofmann, president of North America at Musical.ly, of the partnership. "They're doing a lot of cool things that, when we talk to our users, we know that they enjoy."
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
