MTV Turns 25: A State of the Network Address
I’m sure there are many who will disagree with this contention. They’ll say, “It’s not MTV’s fault, popular culture dictates the trends and MTV simply celebrates them. MTV is nothing but significant because, for the last 25 years, it has been the leading record of pop music documentation.” But let’s just say, for the sake of this article at least, that that is not entirely accurate.
What if MTV was responsible for creating our tastes, what if they were responsible for creating pop culture. There are two main reasons why I feel this is true; one is a company and the other is an idea. MTV is owned by media monolith Viacom. I can’t even begin to describe to you how powerful and large Viacom is.
In addition to thousands of radio stations, the company owns CBS, VH1 and MTV. They have more money than God and there hands are usually in an extraordinate amount of cookie jars, so to speak. To say that pop culture dictates trends and their media outlets just report on them is just plain dumb. Viacom has just as much say on what becomes pop culture as any old record distributor, television conglomerate, radio station or publishing company.
The second element here is not the fault of any one man or corporation, but rather just a product of technology. Through the tools of modernity, most specifically the internet, our culture has reached an apex of hyper-accelerated trend processing. A great example of this is the blogging phenomenon and shows like VH1’s “Best Week Ever.”
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I could talk all day about the devious nature of our aerated culture but that really has nothing to do with my personal feelings towards MTV. At one point, and I’m fairly certain this isn’t fiction, MTV operated apart from this current system of how we intake music and entertainment.
At least in the very beginning, music videos were relegated to the arthouse crowd and the post-punkers, bands like Devo and other new wave type acts. That didn’t last for long and by the mid 80’s perhaps the whole thing went to shit with the hair metal outfits, but there was an undeniable sincerity about that period which saved the channel, even if the sincerity was totally contrived.
Music came out of that era looking pretty good, as the 90’s ushered in alternative rock. Shows like 120 Minutes were key to the development of that genre and the eventual explosion of the grunge scene. Everything stayed fairly cool through most of the 90’s for MTV and then WHAM! The 21st Century brought unpardonable sins from the MTV people: Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet Sixteen, Room Raiders, The Hills, Making the Band 3, Next, Date My Mom, Your Momma, Punk’d, etc. etc. etc.
And there you have it, that’s how MTV became insignificant. It’s not about ratings. It’s about killing every ideal that you were founded on, one stupid show at a time.
