MTV = RTV?

Blog entry for Popular Culture Class at NEiA:

“Well, if I wasn’t here I’d be watching not-music on MTV.” Those are the words I said to a friend at a cookout a few years ago, and it caused immediate laughter from myself, her and two others who had overheard it. But when I said this, I was being dead serious. When was the last time anyone had seen good music on MTV? It’s been a while since we’ve seen the days of “Video killed the radio star”, “Thriller” or even N*Sync videos. MTV, in its heyday, was a constant target for popular culture. It was constantly referenced, revolutionized the music industry, and brought forth the concept of the VJ. Today MTV has a cesspool of reality and other pop culture programs aimed at the teenage and young adult demographics. The executives for the network recognized the ratings that reality TV shows like “The Real World” provided them and began to make more and more programs like it and cut back the music that was once it’s centerpiece. Executives want more ratings for their network, and they follow what’s “popular” to get that. At this point in time, Americans love reality television. With shows like Big Brother, Survivor, and The Real World not only ruling the ratings but infiltrating our popular culture it’s hard to ignore reality tv’s impact on ratings. And executives always want a piece of that pie, even if it means compromising their original purpose for their channel. Before they started airing programs like The Real World, MTV was averaging close to half a day’s worth of music videos a day—last year it averaged just three hours. Popular culture is a force that will take down whatever gets in its way, even if that thing is something that was an incredibly revolutionary and innovative channel that was both original and popular at it’s beginning. The ratings came pouring in from these new non-music and reality programming, and the executives never wanted to look back. It was no longer MTV, it was now RTV.

However, artists and some of the public cried out for more programming that was centered on music (For example, when accepting at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, Justin Timberlake challenged MTV to “play more damn videos!”). As a result nowadays they have added more programming centered on music, but pushed it into the early morning slot—like it was some kind of disease not fit to see the light of day. I mean, from 3-9 AM who actually watches music videos from the past and present along with music updates, interviews, and performances? Not many, and back in it’s heyday this type of programming would have been worshipped by thousands, if not millions, of viewers across TV land. . This is the type of isolation that executives want, showing more reality and less of MTV’s original trademark. The audiences twenty years ago weren’t mindless drones who watched staged “reality” programming because we wished we lived their lives or because of some other fantasy we have today. In the future I believe that we can all say that if we weren’t here we’d be watching not-music on MTV.


Lastly--I'd like to share a video at this point, a very well done video by SuperNews on the tv channel Current. Shortly after it aired on tv and made it's rounds on the internet MTV announced it would be adding more music television. I believe it's an incredibly well-done & funny video and would like to share it: