Music-Free Television: A Timeline of MTV's Video (De)Evolution
MTV announced last week that they were removing the "Music Television" slogan from their branding, to better reflect their increasing lack of music coverage. For those of us who grew up on music videos, we're left wondering how MTV went from a network showing music videos 24 hours a day, to a network that might show an hours worth. Here's a look at the network's systematic reimagining.
The Beginning
August 1, 1981: MTV went on the air for the first time, showing music videos 24/7. Things were anything but smooth, off and on the camera. See for yourself.
September 1, 1987: In the fall of 1987, realizing they couldn't just show music videos all the time, MTV launched a trio of new shows: Week In Rock, Club MTV and Remote Control, marking the first shift in music video-specific programming. Now MTV had a news show, a dance show, and a game show in their stable of programming.
Music Video Watch: Though they were all straightforward, MTV launched five big music video shows in this era, including the alt rock-centric 120 Minutes, Heavy Metal Mania, We're Dancin' (for New Wave junkies) and the Top 20 Video Countdown, among others.
The Next Step
After MTV diversified their programming, true celebrity personalities began to rise with the MTV ranks. Not just tuning into the next video, people were equally as interested in on-camera figures such as Julie Brown (Just Say Julie), Downtown Julie Brown (Club MTV), Kurt Loder (The Week In Rock) and Fab 5 Freddy (Yo! MTV Raps).
June 2, 1991: The day the animation invasion hit MTV. Beginning with Liquid Television in 1991, MTV rode a wave of animation success which included bigger hits such as Beavis and Butthead (1993), Daria (1998), and Celebrity Death Match (1997, cult favorites such as Aeon Flux (1995), The Head (1994), and The Maxx (1995), not to mention obscure series including Downtown (1999) and Undergrads (2001). This also signaled a larger, emerging trend at MTV--shows did not have to explicitly engage music content for them to gain popularity on the network
May 21, 1992: MTV airs Season 0 of The Real World, one of the first "reality" shows to hit television, and really, the beginning of the end for MTV (as far as music goes). The Real World initially began with 5 strangers spending a weekend together in a New York loft, but in 1993, it was expanded to seven characters living together of a span of several months. The success of The Real World not only spawned 22 seasons over 18 years, but it also led to numerous other reality shows infiltrating MTV, including Road Rules, RW/RR Challenge, and eventually influence the post-2000 boom of reality programming.
Fall 1993: The State and The Jon Stewart Show both debuted, further expanding MTVs range of programming, and establishing MTV as a spot for general entertainment. These were MTV's first comedy shows to gain any sort of meaningful notoriety. The State only lasted 3 seasons, largely in part to its rabid cult following. And despite being MTV's second highest-rated show, The Jon Stewart Show only lasted two seasons. But more importantly, it laid out the blueprint for future shows, such as The Jenny McCarthy Show, The Tom Green Show, and Jackass.
Music Video Watch: MTV continued to expand its music video offerings between 1987 and 1994, adding 9 new themed music video shows, while retaining most of the previously established shows. Highlights from this era include Headbanger's Ball, MTV Unplugged, hip-hop dance show The Grind, Alternative Nation and request show Dial MTV.
The Golden Era
By the mid-90s, MTV had comfortably transitioned into a network that placed music videos front and center, but surrounded it with off-base programming to keep everything fresh. The Real World was well entrenched as a cultural phenomenon, animated shows had become expected, while Singled Out became MTVs next breakout show. The third evolution of MTV began around this time, highlighted by competitive dating shows, more reality television, and the introduction of MTVs most important program.
August 17, 1995: This is the day that of Yo! MTV Raps essentially died. If the success of The Real World failed to set off any alarms regarding the demise of the music video, then the cancellation of Yo! MTV Raps had to worry at least a few people. Hip Hop had spent years struggling to gain steady airplay on the network, and now its flagship show was getting stripped down and pushed into the middle of the night. Sure, it "came back" under various monikers and formats, but it was never the same.
September 14,1998: Merging two previous shows, MTV Live and Total Request, the debut of Total Request Live signaled many things for MTV. While previous watchers of MTV had been into alternative rock, electronic, and hip-hop, the emerging generation of teenagers were looking for a source of straight pop. When TRL debuted, allowing viewers to vote for their favorite videos, it quickly became MTVs most popular show, not only catapulting Carson Daly to fame, but also proving that music videos still had some viability after all.
Music Video Watch: MTV still had a healthy stable of celebrity VJs, including Bill Bellamy, Kennedy, Idalis and Daisy Fuentes. Hip-hop was starting to gain airplay on the backs of Bad Boy and Death Row Records. However, there were already complaints that MTV wasn't playing enough videos. So Total Request came on the scene as a pre-recorded, dinnertime precursor to its live counterpart, MTV Live tried to make music videos significant, Say What let you sing along, and 12 Angry Viewers let a group of citizen panelists critique music videos. But not even that could stop the demise of many shows, including the Top 20 Video Countdown, Yo! MTV Raps, 120 Minutes, Alternative Nation, MTV News and Headbangers Ball. See a movement brewing here?
The New Millennium
By 2000, video shows were becoming increasingly scarce, except for TRL and a couple of stray programs, many of which didn't even show whole videos anymore. Instead, the rise of reality television continued, squeezing out music videos by any means necessary. Also notable was the increase in meta-programs, which covered the lives of the musicians more than their music.
March 5, 2002: The success MTV found in documenting the life of Ozzy Osbourne and family on The Osbourne's ushered in a new sub-genre of reality television for MTV: celebrity reality. Soon we would be having the lives of people like Ashlee Simpson, Bam Margera, Rob Dyrdek, Diddy and Jessica Simpson broadcast non-stop.
July 11, 1999: It says something about the impending doom of music videos, when meta-program Making The Video becomes more popular than the finished product. This program also gave rise to pseudo-reality shows such as Cribs and Diary.
August 10, 2001: MTV finds success with cheaply produced, dating game shows that they air in the afternoons against shows on other networks such as Blind Date. What was once a block reserved for music videos, quickly became a wasteland where contestants were invited to date other people's mothers, go on a date with multiple people at once, or consider leaving their significant other for new love.
September 28, 2004: As even TRL began to wane in influence, MTV discovered yet another way to "innovate" in the reality space, by creating a scripted reality show with Laguna Beach. Not that The Real World and its spinoffs hadn't already devolved into this realm, but Laguna Beach barely made an effort to make it look real. Not that it mattered--teenage girls everywhere ate it up.
Video Watch: TRL was unquestionably the most important music video show from this era, with hip-hop request show Direct Effect lagging in a distant second. You couldn't escape N*Sync, the Backstreet Boys and their million clones. MTV also developed a flurry of video shows between 2000 and 2005, but many of them were short-lived, and most (if not all) of the older, established shows died.
The Avalanche
It's impossible to describe everything that happened after the 1-2 punch of Laguna Beach and The Hills, but let's just say that music videos never stood a chance. What's left with is a post-apocalyptic landscape of reality television, competitions and game shows that have numbed us all to the point where we get excited by Jersey Shore--not because it's good, but because it looked remotely authentic (spoiler: it wasn't).
May 31, 2006: LC, Whitney, Audrina, Heidi, Spencer and Co. escaped the restraints of high school and parents and curfews, and took the possibilities of a money-filled, responsibility-free life to great new heights on The Hills. It also made MTVs target audience care even less about music videos. The music idols of yore had been replaced.
November 16, 2008: Not even, TRL, MTV's most important show could avoid the C word (ahem, cancellation). By the time TRL went off the air, Carson Daly was long gone, and the show was an afterthought in the American zeitgeist. We now had YouTube. But hey, it was fun.
Music Video Watch: Did you not just read this whole thing?
Locating MOG account...
Comments (19)
The pinnacle of commercialization and trivialization of music, MTV is partly responsible for the decay of music's influence in the cultural sphere.
That is not to say there weren't interesting things done there, but the mix of music and video was one of those "innovations" that's ubiquity is not good for music overall..like that other innovation with computers..what's it called again.
MTV was an external force that greatly effected the music that got made. I'm not a fan of most videos, and I like some of them, but when making a video became an essential part of being a music artist (ie. required for success), videos became an expensive hassle.
The idea that videos (commercials for songs) were to be the content, used to grab attention so tweens and teens would watch commercials, meant MTV was 95 per cent commercials (MTV News was pretty cool though in that other 5%). Only baby boomers (the first generation raised on TV and advertising) could have come up with an innovative (and archly cynical) way to cram 55 minutes of advertising into an hour, label it a "new' and "improved" way of consuming music, and the future of music, all the while decrying how music was so plastic and artificial compared to their musical heroes (Janis,Jimi,Jim).
So MTV traded on the power of music to popularize itself while cannibalizing music in the process...When music's influence was just a shell of it's former self..MTV abandoned it.
Video Killed the Radio Star...........
Boomers mostly suck - and have the nerve to find fault with younger generations because they can't fathom their own selfishness. Sorry.
Music as just another commodity..so special was music to the boomers that it "defined" a generation..they removed that option for future gens, totally defanged rock and roll (by hall of faming it), and, once given the reins of the music business, sold it off to the highest bidder and drove it into the ground. Fucking synergy..even rebellion is a commercial now.
Brand Rebel - too true.
Nonmonetization is the new rebellion. It is like I said on a post a few days ago, when you devalue music and creativity, then you will pay the price. Free is not cheap enough for some of this crap. There will be a way out of this, and it won't be from thinking big.
Small is good..
being a boomer i don't think i suck. Those who make broad generalizations about groups of people and then apologize, suck.
Obviously, there are individuals within a generation who don't follow the norms..but the hegemony of the baby boomer culture can't be denied, can it?
I mean i'm on the fringe of some definitions of baby boomer (born 64)..I'm just trying to call it like I see it as far as MTV is concerned.
Robert Warren "Bob" Pittman (born 28 December 1953), was the programmer who led the team that created MTV..A baby boomers ideas fueled MTV. I'm saying that the "revolution" created by MTV was not good for music as a whole and commoditized and characterized music as never before..turning it into a marketing tool for everything folks wanted to sell to kids.
Ok, I take back my apology. :)
Overbroad indeed. But the lack of insight into where all this was headed falls squarely on your generation. You yourself admit that this is a 'group,' and while everyone was cashing in on the ingenuity of your generation people forgot and succombed to groupthink: they forgot that you had a duty to maintain an economic, cultural, and biological environment that would allow further generations to create and flourish just as you all had.
Instead we get ridiculous copyright laws that reach generations down the line, incredible debt, and the commodification of the middle class consumer. So forgive me for my rant, but the evidence is there.
i guess i don't belong here.
Why do you say that? You belong as much as any of us.
Here's a Michael Martin Murphey cover that addresses ctpetersonart3's underlying question:
I'm not going to generalize anything or anyone and just say that this was a well written article:)
I'm only 28 and was born in the year that MTV launched. Ever since I was old enough to realize I loved music (about 5 or 6, thanks mom and dad), I was watching Mtv.
It was really sad to be a teenager and be able to notice that there weren't so many music videos being played anymore, especially when music was playing such a HUGE part in my emotional growth. 120 minutes and Liquid Television were reasons to stay up late and honestly, I feel they had a huge effect on my thinking process from a very young age. As soon as TRL and Real World season whatever showed up, it was time to end the affair. It'd been going downhill for too long.
"I feel they had a huge effect on my thinking process from a very young age."
I totally believe that..Do you think videos enhance, detract, and /or illuminate the tune?..Are they just a different way of hearing the music?
Do you expect a video for a tune?
I think it depends on the video, and what the band is interested in portraying in said video... Example: You've got the really 'artsy' videos from Chris Cunningham (well, mostly) and others, then you have the handheld camera, shot in the back yard videos.
Sometimes the video CAN enhance the song. Some songs have even gotten MORE love from me post-video (Portishead: Only You, for example) and on the other hand, some videos have made me not like the song so much (I won't name anything specific here).
Sometimes in the case of vague lyrics or subject matter, a video might help clarify what a song is 'about' for me personally; or on a larger scale to the artist and/or what they are trying to put forward to their public.
I think a video really can say a LOT about the artist in general, but you have to look into it a little. I like when you can see an artist's or musician's sense of humor, especially.
But then again, I went to art school and am getting my MFA in Modern Art Theory and Criticism. So maybe I just enjoy looking into things far too much:)
At first videos were new and shiny..I couldn't stop watching. Then it got a little sinister for me, as the prices went up and up and the production values went up and up. Then videos were very shiny and seemingly required.
As a stand alone artistic thing videos can be great, but ultimately I no longer see the connection between the music and the video.
I guess if it part of the artists vision..it's cool. In the end though, I can't get over the promotional tool part.
I too am in a Modern Art course right now, so I totally get looking into stuff.
That was how it was for me, too. At first, every video got a watch. Even if I didn't like the song. Then it seemed like EVERY video had a song, not the other way around. Even if the song sucked, there was a video.
There seems to be an entire genre inside the art of music videos for 'masturbatory self promotion/narcissism '. Those are the ones that kill me. And they're the ones that are EVERYWHERE.
My favorite videos are the stand-alones. Absolutely. The ones that are video art, not just a video of the artist writhing around on an in-studio stage for 5 minutes or so. I've got a long list of favorites, but mine are usually the more 'epic' or 'storytelling' ones: Faithless' We Come One, Royksopp's What Else is There?, Orbital's The Box, etc.
Unless they are really worth watching these days, I don't bother. But the ones that are worth watching make it worth it. To me, at least:)
There's a saying, and it works for everything: Good design goes to heaven, bad design goes EVERYWHERE.
Yup, that about sums it up.
I grew up and grew out of MTV myself. The music videos and VJ's of the eighties made a real impression on me. It had a certain taboo at the time, even like other network shows such as "you can't do that on television" on Nickelodeon. Even during high school, for me, shows such as 120 Minutes really defined a culture and the growth of music. Unfortunately I do not consider the music "industry" to have any real connections with contemporary culture, nor quality music, and it is here where I feel MTV missed the boat. When I "grew up" I became an artist, now a teacher too, and continue to invest heavily in music, mostly vinyl. Whereas the production of vinyl took a rest on the backburner during the nineties, it has reemerged and now carries some of the best names in contemporary music culture. MTV however made no comeback and it is about time they dropped the "music" moniker. I do miss the original concept of MTV, as I enjoy the artistic quality of music videos, even if I am not as keen on the actual bands, and that was an aspect of early MTV I enjoyed. It was fun entertainment. YouTube is great, but I am surprised that there is not yet a venue to watch random music videos of a particular genre. As for that, I must say "I want my MTV".