Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/26/watch-how-mtv-went-from-awesome-to-atrocious.html
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It’s more like a brand that has lost it’s identity. A couple of years back they tried to bring back TRL… minus the music videos… and often times it was a pre-recorded show (like how TRL was done right before it’s previous cancelation). They tried and failed to capture gen z’s attention which is why they’re stuck showing millennials Rob Dyrdek’s clip show for hours on end.
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does the video blame capitalism? because the pursuit of money and selling people what they seem to want is how we got to the dreadful endpoint of mtv.
cue the gif showing the guy . . .
i’m not saying it was capitalism
but it was totally capitalism.
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The people who made this video should do one on the “History” Channel next.
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Yep. This has happened many times with semi-successful cable shows. They start out with a premise. Premise works. But it gets to the point they are only getting so many eyeballs. So they decide to try something new. Something works, they get more eyeballs. So they do something like that again.
Eventually, through chasing eyeballs, they end up with shows that are popular for views, but have little to nothing to do with the original premise.
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Absolutely, it was.
When Mtv first went on air, there were zero commercials, not very many videos, a bunch of crazy cool animations, and somewhat interesting V-jays.
It was awesome, and while change is inevitable, the unchecked greed ruined everything.
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The internet archive has quite a collection of footage from the early days of MTV. Commercials and all. The clip quality varies, but generally think CRT and VHS playback resolution.
And of particular note, the first 4 hours of MTV from 1981.
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Wait, just to be clear here. You’re saying Mtv still exists?
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It’s right there next to the Ship of Theseus.
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Portlandia even had a fundraiser to take back MTV…
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I think the biggest fall from grace belongs to The Learning Channel.
They started off as a joint effort between NASA and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide free education through the medium of television. 40 years later they were airing Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
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commercials, and reality TV killed MTV for me.
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Grew up watching it, and while it was teetering toward lameness as far as the music shown what destroyed its soul were 2 introductions - The Real World which was ground breaking for being the first reality show and also horrible for being the first reality show, and the movement toward the beach house programming that spent all day watching spring break kids with their hands in the air listening to bad music while Bill Bellamy sucked up all the air time convincing you how awesome everything going on behind him was. Basically during this period all music videos stopped airing outside of 120 minutes which was on at like 1am once a week. When people bring up how the 90’s sucked this is somewhere in the back of their minds.
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Citation needed.
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Yeah, right next to MySpace…
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From what I’ve read, I guess I should be happy I missed the HBB boat.
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Same, it sounded more like a garbage barge than a proper boat anyway.
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I mean I get nostalgia but it’s a little discombobulating that apparently my generation has completely forgotten how much MTV actually sucked and was not a force for good in music. It wasn’t all Devo and Talking Heads and delightful high weirdness, it was 99.9% shitty hair metal and teenybopper pop.
As the great prophet Mojo Nixon put it in his call and response liturgy:
MTV
Get away from me
I don’t want to see
No MTV
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That’s why I’ve made the switch to EXP TV. Seems like mutant friendly content.
