Thirty years ago today, MTV launched the 1980s by playing “Video
Killed the Radio Star.”
If The Buggles’ clip portended a Jetsonsesque future,
first-day fare by Leo Sayer, Andrew Gold, and Cliff Richard
suggested that the cable upstart didn’t initially seek to
revolutionize as much as fill airtime. Every hour or so, the
network played a three-minute reminder of how much of a square Rod
Stewart had become since leaving The Faces. And does anything say
'70s louder than the 29th song aired, Gerry Rafferty’s
“Baker Street”? But on the day the cable gods created Music
Television, videos by The Pretenders, Nick Lowe, and Split Enz
demonstrated a creature of the moment at least attempting to
broadcast in its moment.
Early MTV exuded cool. The audacious expropriation of the
lunar landing indicated that a network that reached just a few
thousand cable subscribers in New Jersey envisioned itself as
something out of this world. From a manic Pete Townshend shouting
“I Want My MTV!” to a faux presidential run by Randee of the
Redwoods, decade-one station promos made the perfunctory
entertaining. In its forever morphing color scheme and
polkadot-to-stripes-to-whatever patterns, the logo even broke the
rules. It’s the small details that made MTV a big deal.
The channel served as the greatest promotional vehicle in
the history of popular music. It made not just individual acts but
whole genres. Crushes on synth-driven New Wave, power-ballad Hair
Metal, anti-star Alternative, late-'90s Crunch Metal, and poppy Boy
Bands ensured young America’s infatuation. It abruptly went from
making bands to breaking the music industry. It is fitting that by
the end of MTV’s music video run its heavy rotation consisted of
Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and other “artists” best
appreciated on mute. The Music had been conquered by the
Television. Hadn’t MTV signaled this fate in its first minutes on
the air?
The inaugural video’s foreshadowing was hardly limited to
the visual trumping the audio. The plastic clothing, robotic
vocals, and synthetic keyboards of “Video Killed the Radio Star”
suggested an artificial future.
MTV’s staged authenticity fooled a global audience when a
student asked Bill Clinton, “Boxers or briefs?” after producers had
planted the question to the president’s high-school interrogators.
In The Real World, producer-instigated scenarios present a
spectacle in which the vicarious living of the viewer occurs
through the intermediary of a behind-the-scenes controller
vicariously living through an onscreen twentysomething avatar.
The Hills honestly tackled this dishonesty by brilliantly
concluding its run with the camera panning back to stage hands
removing a set behind the beautiful people in whose supposed real
lives the viewers had engrossed themselves and then fading to an
image of the “Hollywood” sign. At least the housewives hooked on
old-school soap operas grasped that the drama was, well,
drama.
So when MTV called itself Music Television long after it
had killed the music the name’s surface-to-substance disconnect
meshed perfectly with its what-you-see-isn’t-what-you-get
programming. The “M” stands for manufactured.
Viacom announced in February 2010 that MTV no longer stood
for Music Television, a redundancy on par with China conceding that
it’s not actually a People’s Republic. Music Television was born on
August 1, 1981. When it died is a point of debate. In the mid-1980s
when it axed its original five VJs? In 1987 when Remote
Control, its first foray away from music, aired? In 1992 when
seven strangers met on The Real World? Later that decade
when programmers ran sexual indoctrination films on a weekend loop
as though viewers lived in a closed-circuit reeducation
camp?
At each step away from the music, the complaints grew. So
did the ratings. Fueled by trash-TV favorites Teen Mom and
Jersey Shore, MTV springboarded into this summer off of
six straight quarters of ratings growth. Crap sells.
It would be understandable if the house guests who let
Snooki, the Dog Brothers, and Gary and Amber into your living room
would never again be welcome. But MTV also introduced us to
Courtney Cox, Carson Daly, and Mike Judge, and aired high caliber
experimental fare such as The State, Liquid
Television, The Tom Green Show, and True
Life. Occasional excellence ensured that, even after the
videos had disappeared, habituated early viewers reappeared for
their fix only to find a let down. The MTV that had initially
attracted our remotes had, like that forever-fluctuating logo,
become another station entirely.
Targeting the same demographic paradoxically caused its
programming to forever shift. As one generation outgrows MTV,
another one — with different interests — takes its place. A
graduate of the class of ‘81 creepily hangs out in the familiar
teenage haunts. We grew up. MTV never did.
Amusements enjoyed at 17 — pool hopping, drinking in the
football bleachers, random prank phone calls — get you arrested at
37. Watching MTV should be one such activity.
I want my MTV. I keep getting some younger kid’s
MTV.
