Business

O-bummer! MTV tunes out prez campaign

President Obama’s re-election campaign wants to connect with young Americans and reached out recently to MTV for help — but the cable network turned them down, sources tell The Post.

The president’s Get Out the Vote campaign, run by Buffy Wicks, concerned the high unemployment rate of the so-called millennial generation would turn them off to their candidate, asked the network of “Jersey Shore” about helping to supply them with ideas on how to deal with their, er, situation.

The campaign called MTV’s internal ad agency, MTV Scratch, for assistance in mid-August, sources familiar with the conversations said.

MTV Scratch, run by Ross Martin, former MTVU boss, and Anne Hubert, who was a policy adviser to Jon Corzine when he was a US senator from New Jersey, works across all the MTV Networks and helps marketers such as General Motors and Dr. Pepper understand the mind-set of young people.

The re-election effort wants to reconnect with youth, which were among its most fervent supporters in 2008.

“The youth initiative is having trouble with big donors and youth votes,” said a person familiar with the discussions. “They asked, ‘Can you tell us how we should be talking to them?’ ” one source noted.

Viacom’s unit took a few weeks before getting back to the campaign to decline its invitation, saying that it doesn’t do political work.

Sources familiar with the campaign’s efforts said it didn’t try to hire MTV or MTV Scratch. Executives at Scratch had no comment.