This is not as much a
token gesture as it may first seem. Apparently, from an
article I read about it, this is costing them at least
$2 million in
ad revenues. That is definately a
significant amount of money, even for a network like
MTV. And while agree doing it mainly
overnight is not exactly the time when it will have the most
impact, it's running for a decent amount during the
day also, ending right before
TRL, so a number of people will at least see a little bit of it.
They are claiming that it is part of a year-long program, Fight For Your Rights, and that there will be other programming besides these 17 hours, and the commercial-free showing of Anatomy of a Hate Crime, which detailed the killing of Matthew Shepard (which had me totally in tears and an emotional mess by the end, like Boys Don't Cry did also).
Yes, they could do more. A lot more. But they're already doing a lot more to at least educate people about hate and discrimination than other big media properties.