I haven't watched the MTV Awards, in total or earnest, since 1988. Seriously. That's the last time that I cared about it. I briefly tuned in a few years back to see Duran Duran pick up a lifetime achievement award, and due to technical difficulties, it ended up being a real bust.
I taped the whole evening back in 1988 (still have the tape, too). It was a good evening. Started out with everyone's (well, mine at least) favorite game show, Remote Control. They had a contest, and the winner got to be on Remote Control, and then go to the VMA's afterward. They had a one-hour show where it showed this guy trying to get to the VMA's with Colin Quinn and Ken Ober (I think - it's been a long time).
Then they had the VMA's. The big winner was INXS, winning a lot of awards for "I Need You Tonight". I seem to remember Guns 'N Roses singing "Welcome To The Jungle". The VJ's (when they were still good) were out in full force. It was the typical, glamorous MTV evening. The tape wraps up with Adam Curry in the bathroom (the only quiet place in the building) to recap the winners by showing the videos that took awards. What's not to love? I was about a month shy of turning 15. It was sheer heaven for me.
Then it all started to change.
Remote Control was no longer as fun as it once was. Music started to change. By 1989, there was a surge of hair metal - something I never could stomach, and the roots of what would later become grunge were starting to take hold. Metallica was finding a strong presence for their dark music. Groups that I liked were slowly fading away, or weren't turning out videos like they once had. There was a change in VJ's. MTV also first made the initial turn to being largely scheduled programming, as opposed to showing videos. To quote a favorite movie, "I preminiced no return of the salad days". Gasp - I started watching more......VH-1! (shhh - don't tell)
The daily viewings of "Yo! MTV Raps" ceased in the summer of 1989. I would enjoy hip-hop for a few more years, but rap was beginning to drift from the Old Skool that I loved so much. I stopped watching Club MTV around the same time. It had grown stale. I started watching Headbanger's Ball in 1992, when I met Nelson. He had been with it from the beginning, when Adam Curry and Kevin Seal were hosting. Then Ricki Rachtman took over. We stuck with it until the bitter end, in 1995. By that time, it was sucking large. We groaned every time that Rob Zombie came on to paint the walls. Beavis and Butthead were canceled in 1997, and that ended my MTV watching days, until The Osbournes were picked -up, and then we watched only long enough to catch the episode. And so, I bid Adieu to MTV - a mere shell of it's former, glorious self.
I was a true MTV junkie. I couldn't wait to get it on when I got home from school. I was glued to each World Premiere. When we finally got cable, we were on a different system from the kids I went to school with, and thus I was the only one who got MTV. For a while, everyone was jealous.
So what brought back all this waxing nostalgic? Last night's train-wreck. I'd heard the awards were on, but had no interest in watching. I saw the clip on the MSN page about Britney Spears being nothing short of embarrassing, and it sparked a thread on a forum I belong to. I listed my reasons for disillusionment with MTV, and the current state of the music industry in general. That brought up an interesting MTV discussion with some good points by a good friend of mine:
Ok. I get it now. It took the above to hit me with a wake-up call. While MTV has changed their format (and not for the better), I have simply outgrown it. Like it or not, I'm no longer their target demographic. I have officially become middle aged. I guess it was bound to happen. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch some VH-1............I think a big part of the problem with the VMA's is what MTV started out as, and what it has become in the last 25 years.
MTV was "cool" when it started out, back before everything in the entertainment industry went completely corporate. If you were a new artist and MTV and played your video, chances are you were going to be huge. I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure MTV essentially made Madonna. It was a network for the younger generation, irreverent and sort of anti-authoritarian. I think the VMA's started out the same way -- a hip, cool awards show that was everything the old, stodgy Grammy's weren't.
But over the years it seems like the VMA's have become another established corporate awards show -- just like the Grammy's. MTV is nothing more than a set of offices at CBS/Viacom, and instead of being run by people who love music and know what's "cool", it's being run by recent college graduates who are simply chasing ratings and ad revenue. Their idea of "programming" is trying to capitalize on whatever the 18-34 demographic thinks is cool.
So in reality, MTV sold it's soul to the almighty dollar a long time ago. And because of that, I would say that MTV is essentially irrelevant today -- just another cable channel that used to be about music but somewhere along the line decided that crappy reality shows starring Ashley Simpson get better ratings.
Not helping at all is the sorry state of the music industry, where there are very few legitimate "stars" or even people with any demonstrable talent. Just a bunch of bands and pop stars created and manufactured by record labels, many of whom don't stick around long enough for anyone to care about them. And even a lot of the big names are "stars" only because they're on TV a lot, or because the kids think
they're "cool" -- not because they have any actual talent.
No comments:
Post a Comment