In news that’s sure to upset approximately none of you, the New York Daily News reports on rumors that Total Request Live may be history.
Is time up for ?TRL?? An insider says MTV could soon bring the ax down on its signature countdown show because nobody watches it.?The ratings are at an all-time low, around 300,000 viewers,? says the source. ?The show is going to be canceled and rebranded.”
(In other words, MTV has created a generation of viewers who don?t have the attention span to watch a music video.)
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Last Thursday, under-performing MTV president Michael Wolf abruptly left his job, although he said the decision to do so was his.
An MTV rep did not comment.
If true (and it is), the news represents a programming shift; the dial-MTV formula has been in effect, under one name or another, since the dawn of the network. But these days kids would rather watch Exposed than four minutes of Pussycat Dolls (we don’t blame them). So will MTV kill the video countdown? Should they? You so don’t give a shit do you? How old is John Norris?
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finally.
i’d much happier if “TRL” was replaced with “MTV” in this report.
haha, john norris creeps me out.
yes, no, not really and a year younger than god
MTV has been the “crappy reality show network” for at least ten years now.
I miss 120 minutes…I remember episodes where Bob Mould actually hosted it, and Liz Phair played live in the studio.
If you get expanded cable, VH1 Classic is the closest to what MTV used to be 15 or 20 years ago, almost all music related.
uh, wow big deal…trl doesnt bring any kind of musical value to any person anyways. or any kind of value, perse.
TRL isn’t being canceled because of short attention spans. I think it’s because there are better, more complete pop countdown shows out there, and TRL is like one giant commercial. If they played full videos, I guarantee the ratings would go up.
Ive waited 9 years for this!! That show was the caused of MTV’s downfall and Im glad somebody at Viacom is finally acknowledging it. Does this mean music videos in general will replace it?
this is the best news i’ve heard all day.
It’s time for a massive overhaul of MTV in general. It went from youth-oriented and edgy to a bunch of half-hearted reality shows. At this moment in time NBC might actually have edgier programming than MTV.
I agree that if TRL would show entire videos, instead of just 20 second clips, it would do much better. Not to mention, when do kids even get to see music videos on MTV in order to vote for them in the first place? At 5 am? Why bother?
if MTV actually played music videos outside of TRL then they would probably find that people are actually interested in the popular ones out of that larger group.
for what its worth, VH1 is really no better. neither is MTV2.
there isn’t really a single good music channel out there. MTV is horrific, period. VH1 has turned into the d-list celebrity reality show channel. who on earth wants to see the inner workings of the hogan family! FUSE is shit too. pants-off dance-off? i wanted to gouge my eyes out. can’t anyone make a decent music channel?!?!
this is nothing but ho-hum news. seeing TRL go is awesome, but the channel will remain craptastic. it’ll just be replaced with something else, or whatever else crap programming mtv has spewing from its frothy, sick-hole. this won’t make mtv any better, and any dreams of hoping mtv -just may- turn it around again, even at a snail’s pace is just that – a dream. boo, i cry.
Before we all say that we want 24 hour music television, let’s watch Fuse for a day and realize that would probably mean a lot of Warped Tour bands and boring modern indie-rock to fill out any time that’s left over in between Christina Aguilera and My Chemical Romance videos. So how about we split it 50/50, and just replace the bad reality TV with better non-music shows? Call me crazy, but I kind of miss the days when MTV was at least taking a chance on some weird stuff. Daria, Beavis and Butthead, The Tom Green show, Biorythm, The Ben Stiller show, Sifl and Olly, Loveline, Liquid Television – none of these shows are super-groundbreaking, but at least they were taking chances and experimenting with the medium of TV. Today’s MTV plays it too safe, and instead of being the rebellious trendsetter, it’s become the ultimate status quo. Maybe it’s just cause I grew up during the tail-end of alternative rock, but my fondest memories of MTV are the ones where my parents made me turn it off cause it was getting too weird.
Does anybody else miss the days when you could watch music videos for 24 hours? I do, I used to be able to do this with VH1 Classic, but even now they are strating to “re-tool” that. MTV what the hell happened to you? You used to be edgy, even a little dangerous, and now the most dangerous thing you got is a nipple at half-time, and even that was cheesy. And the real funny thing is that the suits the run MTV can’t figure out that they are a joke, they’re just standing around like “Gee, I wonder why nobody is watching us?”
We recently got MTV Canada up north here. I can honestly say I don’t think I have seen a single music video on it. It’s turned into the reality TV network for kids who are too cool for Much Music. I think I see a possible opportunity for a actual music network to be created?
IMF (International Music Feed) has a good, all music channel and some really funky bands from around the world. MTV and MTV2 have been crap for years.
I agree with Danny. With basically any music i want available on the internet (for, ahem, free) and a huge portable hard drive to carry it wherever i want to go, my music needs are MORE than met without television. I would much rather have something as awesome as beavis and butthead on tv. But honestly, there’s enough interesting tv out there to keep me entertained (with the help of a tivo), so I could really care less whether mtv turns into the 24 hour a day real world/road rules challenge channel or not.
Video killed the radio star and the internet/iPod/YouTube killed the video channels.
It just seems to me that kids are way hipper than Mtv these days. I know there is talent over at Mtv studios, I mean, their ads are still cutting edge for instance. But the programming is weak.
They should bring back VJs with very specific music tastes, and let the VJs pick their own music. Just draw from all the talented DJs running genre specific clubnights in NY and London. Even if their programs were short, and on only after 11pm once a week, it would still be a step in the right direction.
When I was on vacation in Europe over the Christmas holiday, we kept the hotel tv tuned to Mtv Europe. They played videos all day over there. There was a lot of repetition, and a lot of the same crap bands that are in America, but music videos make good background when you don’t want to be glued to the TV.
A lot of people moan about the shittification of Mtv, but the guys at Mtv have been very smart businessmen. And they will never go back to a all video, or even partial video format.
It comes down to advertising sales. Throughout the 1980′s and early 90′s, cable advertising was dirt cheap. Joe’s Truck and Tow could buy 100 spots on Mtv for about $500. Back then, Mtv made very little profit from advertising. The principle source of revenue was through cable subscription. Any cable company that wanted to carry Mtv (like Comcast or TCI) had to pay Mtv “X” number of dollars per subsciber, per month.
There was a shift in the cable business in the mid-90s as more and more people started to turn to cable, and cable began to offer new tools to measure veiwership. Now advertising is the primary source of revenue for Mtv. In fact, Mtv is currently the second most expensive network to purchase ad time on, after ESPN.
In order to support high priced advertising, a network has to offer programming that has been proven to retain its audience throughout the commercial breaks. Drama and reality TV have proven to keep their audiences captivated throughout their commercial breaks. Music videos do not retain veiwers. We tend to change the channel every time a song comes on that we don’t like.
There is an alternative. Record labels could start paying for the right to play videos on Mtv, ala advertising. Afterall, music videos are commercials. This is why they are called “promos”.
“(In other words, MTV has created a generation of viewers who don?t have the attention span to watch a music video.)”
Ummm, from what I remember seeing of the American TRL, didn’t they only ever show about a minute of each music video?
The internet is the thing that’s caused kids to have tiny attention spans these days, everything’s updated so quickly and everyone’s opinion on the internet (music, film, tits, drugs, etc) seem to change just as fast.
Yeah… TRL’s been trash ever since Carson Daily left the show.
TRL may go, but it’ll only get replaced by something even shittier. I don’t think MTV has any intention of showing videos ever again. Doesn’t matter, MTV is irrelevant now anyways and a its own punchline by calling itself “MUSIC Television”.
I miss 120 Minutes, Alternative Nation, and the Week In Rock. I doubt they’ll ever do anything like that again.
BRING BACK 12 ANGRY VIEWERS!! but with better music videos
i don’t think the problem is the music videos, it’s the LACK of them. no one wants to see 10 minutes of bullshitting and fans playing games and then 20 seconds of gwen stefani’s video. they want to see VIDEOS thats the point of MUSIC television. thats what they don’t get is that its BORRING. thats why my generation has stopped watching MTV, you see one episode of pimp my ride, room raiders and date my mom and you’ve seen them all.
i don’t think the problem is the music videos, it’s the LACK of them. no one wants to see 10 minutes of bullshitting and fans playing games and then 20 seconds of gwen stefani’s video. they want to see VIDEOS thats the point of MUSIC television. thats what they don’t get is that its BORRING. thats why my generation has stopped watching MTV, you see one episode of pimp my ride, room raiders and date my mom and you’ve seen them all.
There’s an all music video channel that I get, called The Tube. It’s fantastic. Way better than MTV or VH1 ever were.
The death of TRL comes as no surprise to me. MTV lost my viewership once they started adding reality shows to its line-up, beginning with The Real World and moving forward from there. I didn’t (and still don’t) give two craps about some loser named Puck!
They need to bring back Abby Gennet. That is all.