In
Pitchfork: Today, it discusses how
MTV isn't what it use to be. When it was first created in New York, August 1st, 1981 its main purpose was to broadcast
music videos in todays' pop culture that catered to young adults. But now MTV or Music Television is full of reality television shows. Because of that, the indie music scene as well as other underground music genres suffer in finding a venue to broadcast their art to the public. And because of that, underground music based websites are creating their own "MTV" to bring back what MTV was and should still be.
They created
Pitchfork TV which launched this week and is streaming a variety of music videos and concerts directed at Pitchfork’s discerning online audience. Theres plenty of videos to fit your every need and is claimed to not be found anywhere else.
Going back on what Pitchfork was discussing briefly on MTV not being about the music anymore, had me thinking on how growing up I would always tune into MTV to watch the latest music videos. You would always know what was hot if you had tuned into MTV. If there was a hot new song out on the radio, it wasn't too long that MTV had a video out for it. MTV also had
TRL which is known as Total Request Live.It was a 2 hour live broadcast until about 2002 when they started pre-tapping where it had the top 10 countdown of the "it" videos. Throughout the day, there was always music videos playing and little reality tv shows and cartoons. Yes, I said cartoons. Hopefully you guys remember
Daria, Beavis & Butthead, Celebrity Deathmatch, etc. The only reality tv shows I remembered were
Real World, Road Rules (the unscripted ones), T
he Tom Green Show, Undressed & FANatic. Now all you see is reality shows on MTV. It should be called RTV (reality television) instead of MTV. The channel is not even sticking to its original roots by providing entertaining our audiences with the latest music. Now its more about what they feel is entertaining, which is seeing people get drunk, have sex, argue & fight. That's what gives ratings and that's what MTV has realized what audiences want to see. Which is very understandable. Even though they may have lost their audience members who were truly about the music videos, they have gained a whole new generation of audiences that are into the things MTV broadcast.
Audiences now a days, buy into what they broadcast, and believe that this is "reality". Business wise, MTV is doing everything right, by figuring out who and what are their key audiences are to keep their channel running, but sticking to their roots and their name they have
failed.
Random fact: Carson Daly was not the original host of Total Request (not a typo) which was actually known as MTV Live until 1998. The original host was British VJ Toby Amies. In 1998, it was then changed to Total Request Live. Wanting to add more a closure and entertaining aspect to it by MTV introduced young audiences to the studio during the countdown. Which made Carson Daly the original host of Total Request
Live.
