Yago spoke on how to create this type of “pro-social programming” at an open forum in Dartmouth College's Rockefeller Center Thursday. Throughout the talk, Yago, who worked as a news correspondent for MTV, CBS News and CNN from 2000 to 2007, referenced his experiences making documentaries.
Yago used his film projects to target young people and foster a discussion about HIV/AIDS, he said.
“Crafting and producing programming about HIV and AIDS for a young audience was all very practical, very much using marketplace tactics that MTV would employ in designing its regular programming,” Yago said in an interview.
Because the media is a push-pull system, creating effective television programming involves paying attention to what viewers are tuning into as well as what they are tuning out, Yago said.
“MTV and HIV grew up together as social phenomenon,” he said. “HIV and AIDS was coming of age as a health crisis and so was MTV as targeting the portion of the population that was most at risk.”
“My job, if I did it right, was to get someone to ask more questions — to go onto the internet, to read a book, to talk to somebody about an issue that they just did not know about,” Yago said in an interview with The Dartmouth. “It is the textbook definition of raising awareness.”