MTV used to have some awesome original content back in the day. Beavis & Butt-Head, Daria, Liquid Television, Cartoon Sushi, the MTV Oddities block of The Head and The Maxx, etc. (I know I’m focusing on animation here, so I’ll throw in Remote Control and The State for good measure.) They had some awesome stuff that you just couldn’t get anywhere else. It wasn’t just music videos. It was adding something new to the culture.
The overhead for those types of shows probably don’t sit well with their viewership numbers anymore. A panel show with people just responding to free-to-access videos is a cheap show they can throw on at low risk, with few eyes needed to recoup costs. Obviously, though, more eyes would make this a healthy moneymaker. But this just an evolution of the lesson learned from The Real World. But with names that people actually know.
