MTV

views updated

MTV

MTV (Music Television) is truly one of the most important pop culture phenomena of the late twentieth century. As a medium, it united the two most important popular culture developments of the post-World War II era: rock 'n' roll and television. Within two decades of its birth in 1981, it defined an international youth culture centered around the rebellious spirit of rock music and the ceaseless consumption of goods. To the many millions of youthful viewers scattered across the globe, MTV is the preeminent medium of global youth culture, offering an intoxicating mix of music, postmodern imagery, consumer goods, and original programming. To its owner, the cable television giant Viacom, MTV is a highly profitable cable channel that offers advertisers unparalleled access to a youthful audience. But to its many critics, MTV is a corrupter of youth, a purveyor of mindless consumerism, and a degrader of all that is authentic about music; one critic suggested in the National Review that MTV renders America's youth "deaf to all higher culture, and blind to all hope or beauty."

Though its reach in the 1990s was global, MTV had humble beginnings. The channel was born at midnight on August 1, 1981, a NASA rocket launch countdown preparing viewers for the sudden appearance of a blank screen, a succession of moon shots, and the image of Neil Armstrong planting an MTV flag in the lunar dust. A male baritone voice dramatically proclaimed, "Ladies and Gentlemen, rock and roll," and the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" became the first in a string of music videos to appear in the homes of 800,000 Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC) subscribers. The idea of the video itself was not new: African American performers Count Basie, Louie Armstrong, and Bessie Smith appeared in video clips with their songs in the late 1940s; Dick Clark's American Bandstand dance show offered "live" (lip-synched) musical performances to a national television audience beginning in 1957; the Beatles released their song "Strawberry Fields" on video in 1967; and other 1970s television shows—Soul Train, In Concert, Midnight Special, and Rock Concert —offered live or recorded musical performances. But MTV gambled that the viewing audience in 1981 was ready for a 24-hours-a-day music channel. It was a gamble that soon paid off.

The brain behind MTV was Robert Pittman, a former radio disc jockey who had become an executive at WASEC. Pittman hoped that MTV—along with the premium channels Nickelodeon and the Movie Channel—would give his company an edge in gaining subscribers in the highly competitive cable market. The company's $20 million dollar investment soon proved worthwhile. MTV's audience grew from just over 2 million at the end of four months to 22 million by 1984, and advertising revenues kept pace. Though the channel had pulled in just $7 million in advertising revenues within 18 months, by 1984 it was earning $1 million a week. In many ways, MTV had an ideal cable product: its content cost the channel nothing, for recording companies provided the videos free of charge in order to promote their bands, and advertisers, eager to reach MTV's demographic of consumers between the ages of 12 and 34, offered everything from food to clothes to other youth-oriented products. Through the early 1980s, MTV viewers were fed a steady diet of videos and ads, videos, and ads; in Rocking Around the Clock, E. Ann Kaplan described the format as "ersatz commercials punctuated by 'real' ones."

The first videos to air on MTV appeared rudimentary and awkward beside current efforts. The total video rotation during the channel's initial months was a scant 125 videos. The common denominator for the videos was their slip-shod production, nonexistent special effects, minimal costs, crude narratives, and home-movie type of appearance. A favorite in the first months was Chris DeBurgh's modern revisiting of a Greek myth called "Don't Pay the Ferryman," a moody narrative about a boat trip across the river Styx with the Grim Reaper as companion. But quality improved fairly rapidly, thanks in no small part to the performer who would come to be called the "King of Pop." Michael Jackson's 1982 release Thriller featured three videos—"Thriller," "Billie Jean," and "Beat It"—that revolutionized the art form and galvanized public attention. The video for "Thriller," for example, which began with a long introduction by horror-film guru Vincent Price, was filmed in a graveyard, and cost an estimated $1.1 million. Hyped for weeks before its release, then debuting in select theaters before it came to MTV, this was the first of many videos to generate a "buzz."

MTV's innovative format and seamless blend of content and advertising drew much attention from academics eager to document the emergence of a postmodern frame of mind. David Tetzlaff observed in the Journal of Communication Inquiry that "MTV denies the existence of all but the moment, and that moment exists only on the screen"; in Monopoly Television, Jack Banks wrote that MTV "repudiates linear conceptions of history, rejecting conventional distinctions between past, present, and future, instead placing itself in a timeless present." The result was an experience that decentered viewers, encouraging them to identify more with the products and images on screen than with more historically significant communities of meaning such as families, political parties, or social class. Even after MTV changed to a more traditional format in the mid-1980s, even after so many advertisements and television programs began to mimic MTV's visual style, the perception remained and the critics agreed: MTV led the postmodernist cultural vanguard.

MTV's rapid emergence as both a profitable cable channel and a cultural force soon drew critics. Some black artists accused MTV of racism for what they felt was a real underrepresentation of non-white musicians, though MTV defended itself with the claim that it merely mirrored trends in album-oriented rock; in any case Michael Jack-son's mid-1980s dominance as king of the video tempered such claims. President Ronald Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, charged that the heady brew of video clips—which he characterized as racy montages of violence, scantily clad women, and surrealistic images—could be dangerous to normal or healthy emotional relationships between the sexes. And media mogul Ted Turner accused MTV of producing a nation of "Hitler Youth" (though his hyperbole may have been influenced by the failure of his competing music channel, Cable Music Channel, in 1984). These would not be the first times that MTV would be accused of undermining the morals of America's youth. But it was difficult to tell if such concerns were a legitimate response to real increases in the amount of sex and violence on the screen, or an ongoing anxiety felt by members of older generations about the music that makes their children dance. MTV might be truly dangerous, or old folks might just be scared of rock 'n' roll.

MTV experienced growing pains during the mid-1980s. On the one hand all was going well, for MTV and other video channels had proved such a lucrative way to market music that fully 75 percent of singles released were now backed by a video. Moreover, MTV was acquired in 1987 by the emerging cable giant Viacom, a company that was able to get MTV into more American homes than ever before. Yet for all these successes, MTV's Neilson ratings were declining from their Thriller -induced highs of 1.5 down to a.7 rating, the channel's coverage of the Live Aid music festival was harshly criticized, and the British art rockers like Duran Duran, the Eurythmics, and Boy George who helped MTV establish an identity were going out of style. Ad revenues declined 10 percent during the first half of 1987, prompting Time magazine to wonder if MTV was "an idea whose time has already gone?" The concern was premature, however, for the one thing MTV has never done is fail to meet the ever-changing demands and interests of its youthful audience.

In its second phase, MTV devised the radical strategy of downplaying music videos and inventing their own programs. In this way, MTV hoped to become a more traditional television channel, thus breaking with its most postmodern elements. New shows introduced included Club MTV (dance), The Week in Rock (news related to the world of rock and roll), and Remote Control (a parody of the traditional game show with contestants strapped into La-Z-Boy recliners, fed pork rinds and cheese puffs, and asked moronic questions). Most innovative was the program Yo! MTV Raps, a compilation of rap videos by black artists. Although MTV executives were hesitant about this show's potential popularity, viewer response was tremendous and the show quickly became one of the most popular summer programs. By the mid-1990s, rap and hip-hop would become MTV mainstays. MTV realized another breakthrough in the early 1990s with its Unplugged shows, which showcased top rock bands playing acoustic instruments before a small audience. With this show MTV achieved 1990s media nirvana: synergy. The Unplugged shows generated singles for radio play, videos that could be plugged elsewhere in the channel's lineup, and albums that could be sold in record stores. By allowing the spirit of rock and roll to seep into news and comedy, and by showcasing the innovative music that was coming out of the predominantly black rap and hip-hop community, MTV gave viewers a reason to stick around.

MTV continued its experiments with content into the 1990s, offering such shows as The Real World and Beavis and Butthead. In The Real World, a group of college age strangers were thrown together in a beautiful house and a camera filmed every moment of their attempts to learn to live together. Editors culled the mass of footage down to hourly episodes which combined the authenticity of real emotion with the narrative hooks of daytime soap operas. The show was an instant hit, and the experiment was repeated again and again. More controversial was Beavis and Butthead, a cartoon about two completely amoral teenage slackers. These antisocial characters set fire to houses, used frogs for batting practice, obsessed about women and farts, and were, all in all, mind-numbingly stupid. The show, which was an instant success, became a lightning rod for public fears about the amorality of youth and, not coincidentally, launched its creator, Mike Judge, to fame. (Judge would soon leave MTV to produce the cartoon series King of the Hill for Fox TV.) MTV's mid-1990s dating show, Singled Out, also proved a launching pad for ex-Playboy Playmate and show co-host Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy's combination of California surf babe beauty and bad girl antics—gross jokes and goofy faces—soon landed her an NBC sitcom.

While MTV's programming echoed with the channel's trademark irreverent and youthful attitude, its popularity and its cross-over into movies and mainstream television meant that MTV's attitude was now embraced more readily by the larger culture (which had itself been influenced by MTV). By 1990 MTV was available in more than 50 million American homes as part of many providers' basic cable packages. Its growing influence and the channel's desire to awaken a political consciousness in its youthful audience led MTV to campaign against the Gulf War in 1991 and to promote voter registration through such devices as "Rock the Vote" commercials starring rock stars and sponsoring registration drives at college campuses and rock concerts. MTV's most visible entry into the political arena was its 1992 interview with Democratic Presidential candidate Bill Clinton. For nearly 90 minutes Clinton fielded questions from a hand-picked audience of earnest young people. Clinton discussed his first rock-and-roll experience—"going nuts over Elvis Presley"—and promised to come back to MTV as president (a promise he later kept).

At the same time that MTV was becoming a pillar of American pop culture it was also spreading across the globe. MTV debuted in Europe in 1987, offering as its first European video the Dire Straits tune "Money for Nothing," with its hypnotic chant, "I want my MTV." MTV Europe began with more than 1.6 million subscribers in 14 different countries, and soon became especially popular in Eastern European countries hungry for the baubles of Western capitalist culture that MTV proved so adept at displaying. MTV Brazil was launched in 1990 and MTV Latino followed in 1993; both channels quickly became popular with Spanish-speaking audiences accustomed to far fewer choices in their cable programming. On MTV Latino in 1995, viewers from Mexico to the tip of Chile watched the birth of a new language—"Spanglish"—as veejays used expressions like "Chequenos" (pronounced CHE-kay-nos), which meant "check us out." Jorge Asis, a former Minister of Culture, commented about the cultural impact of MTV: "The world changed in a very short time…. Suddenly, one world fell, and it was absolutely seduced by the world that imposed itself, that won…. In a world without utopias, the market becomes a new utopia." Not surprisingly, MTV executives took a more optimistic view of their global distribution. MTV's Sara Levinson claimed that "Music is the global language. We want to be the global rock 'n' roll village where we can talk to the youth worldwide."

By the mid-1990s MTV had largely succeeded at reaching that goal, and it promoted its vision of youth culture to 270 million households in more than 125 countries scattered across five continents. The MTV vision was thoroughly rooted in consumerism, for the common language of viewers across the world was music and goods: Michael Jackson and McDonald's, Nirvana and Nike, Beck and Coke. To some critics, MTV's global reach seemed like an Orwellian Big Brother nightmare, with rock-and-roll attitude providing the cover for multinational corporations to push their products to a world of consumers. But the actual picture was more complex, with some 90 percent of MTV's programming produced locally to coincide with differing regional tastes. MTV viewers the world over loved rock and roll, but it was clear that they loved different rock and roll at different times: in 1996, the hottest tracks on MTV Latino were by Madonna, Queen, and the Rolling Stones; on MTV Brazil the favorite was Silverchair; while on MTV Europe Michael Jackson and Tina Turner dominated play lists. For their part, MTV's corporate officers enjoyed the music of money rolling in, as the channel brought in two dollars for every dollar it spent in 1996. Part authentic expression of youth culture, part corporate marketing machine, the phenomena that is MTV captured all the contradictions and all the energy that fueled pop culture in the 1990s.

—Arthur Robinson