Since 1981, MTV has refused to allow political advertisements on its airwaves. Rather than accept cash from our nation's most diseased industry, the network embarked on its own "Choose or Lose" campaign, a glorified get out the vote effort encouraging viewers to register and cast their ballots like a good American should. But all that is changing, effective immediately.

The Viacom network will begin cashing politically-tainted cheques, but only those written by candidates themselves or their parties, not the 527 groups that produce the slickest, and most offensive, attack ads YouTube has ever seen. (Previously, the more interesting MTV properties VH1, Comedy Channel, and Spike TV all took political dollars.)

So what does the about face mean for Election '08?

That MTV is going to cash in. Hard.

With the Democratic primaries over, Barack Obama and John McCain are focusing their pre-November buys on national audiences and targeted regional markets. Obama just aired his first national spot, "Country I Love," and it's likely his camp is tailoring 30-second messages for a younger audience.

And Obama, more so than McCain, understands how to reach the youth vote. He's been doing it online for months. Now, with MTV ready to accept his bucks, he'll do it on TV as well. In fact, Obama's campaign already tried buying airtime on MTV, but was rebuffed because of their policy; MTV's flip-flop all but guarantees Obama will spend some of his millions on TV time each month with the network, which is a win-win for everybody: Obama gets to reach his target audience, and MTV gets to subsidize some of the effects of the advertising recession we've been hearing so much about.

[TV Week]