Posted on 08/10/2004 12:35:01 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
It is hard to believe, but twenty-three years ago, MTV went on the air. The initial business model was so simple, you wonder why someone didn’t think of it before: Take the promotional videos produced by record companies, add some hosts, and let kids see, as well as hear, their favorite performers.
The result was what Adweek called “a cultural force” that “affected the way an entire generation thinks, talks, and buys.” That’s still true, although the original programming model is ancient history.
If you were to tune in to MTV today, you’d probably wonder where the music videos have gone. The answer is that MTV has been out of the music video business for most of the past decade. Welcome to the new century.
Its initial success spawned dozens of imitators, on cable and the networks. So MTV needed to give its easily bored audience something it could not get elsewhere. The “something” was a show called The Real World, which, almost single-handedly, invented “reality television.”
While “reality television” doesn’t sound like a culture-shaping force, it was soon followed by MTV’s first regularly scheduled newscast, The Week in Rock, and its “Rock the Vote” campaign. These efforts all combined entertainment with advocacy.
“Advocacy for what?” is the obvious question. The Washington Monthly dubbed “Rock the Vote” “Mock the Vote” and criticized it for being “obviously slanted to the left.”
In a more subtle but even more effective fashion, The Real World is credited with helping to change attitudes toward homosexuality among younger Americans. The most memorable participant on the show The Real World was probably Pedro Zamora, a gay-rights activist whose subsequent death from AIDS made headlines across the country.
And the advocacy continues. In addition to shows like The Newlyweds and Pimp My Ride, MTV offers Fight for Your Rights. One of the “rights” in question is the unfettered enjoyment of sex. Viewers are urged to take “political action” in support of “comprehensive sex education,” meaning contraception, condoms, and who knows what else.
What MTV is selling, besides music, movies, and soft drinks, is a socially liberal worldview in which personal autonomy, especially in sexual matters, is the highest good. And it’s in a unique position to succeed in its mission because, as Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone has written, MTV has been “handed endless generations of young people who are blank slates.”
Of course, kids are not supposed to be “blank slates.” Parents, communities, and churches are supposed to teach them what they need to know and believe. MTV’s success is proof of how the Church and our culture has failed in its most basic mission.
It’s also a challenge to all of us as Christian parents. We need to know who we’re up against. We need to know what our kids are being taught during school and after school. The lessons go far beyond how to spend their disposable income; they go all the way to “how now shall we live?”
If I had children, I would not own any televisions.
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They have come a long way since the video "Video killed the radio star."
There is no MTV in my house or ever will be...
Last year I got to take part in a "Tiger Cruise," meeting my stepson's ship in Hawaii on its return from deployment in the Persian Gulf, and sailing back to San Diego with him and his ship. In the TV room of his ship, MTV was a popular item. At one point, I was kind of stuck there for awhile, and the programming was so jaw-droppingly stupid, I felt my brain cells dying while watching it. It really saddened me to see the group of young sailors thinking it was substantive entertainment.
I miss Headbanger's Ball.
I'm dumbstruck by the stupidity of the programs as well. In the gym at my apartment complex, it doesn't seem to matter what time I go - someone will be in there with MTV blaring on the television. Running on a treadmill is only made worse by Total Request Live in your face the whole time.
They have that on MTV2 now. ;-)
Headbanger's Ball was awesome. I barely remember episodes of "The Young Ones"...
MTV is like the wolf in the henhouse, these days...
Carson Daly is further proof that talent is optional in the television industry.
I miss 120 Minutes
The Week in Rock wasn't MTV's first news show. MTV News dates back almost to the beginning of the network. The Week in Rock was the first time they really branched their news out beyond the strictly defined music industry and who was entering the studio and leaving the band et cetera.
My daughter is too small to change channels herself, but we do watch videos with her (she really likes Alice in Wonderland).
I know that as she gets older we will probably have to make a decision as to whether we will keep the idiot box or not.
A tv without cable or maybe a video player is better. I'd not expose my children to what's on general tv. They can watch when they are older and are concrete in their family convictions.
The original VJ's don't like the direction MTV has taken since they left. Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn said that they don't let their children watch MTV.
I was in 6th grade--more or less--when MTV premiered. It was all ANYONE talked about for about the next three or four years. Friday and Saturday nights were for staying up late and watching MTV for the latest video by Michael Jackson, or the Police, or Men At Work, or Duran Duran, or Huey Lewis & The News, or Def Leppard, etc. etc. Which begat TBS's all-night video showings (NIGHT TRACKS), then ABC's FRIDAY NIGHT VIDEOS. I remember which video was #1 on MTV's very first Top 20 Video Countdown (anybody else?). I remember the Friday Night Video Fights...
Try and find a music video on MTV today is like trying to find a thought in Jeanine Garafalo's head. Fruitless.
My town , Livingston, Montana, got MTV deleted from the local cable system about ten years ago through a letter writing campaign.
MTV was the main reason I would not get cable when my kids were young.
Sybeck1,
CMT is MTV.
MTV's tentacles on television have grown:
Self-Made: VH1, Nickelodeon, TV Land
Acquired: Spike TV (formed in 2000 by a bait-and-switch when closing the newly acquired Nashville Network, and then using the channel signal on the satellite to push for an adult male channel. Spike TV is one of the worst channels on television with its adult programming inappropriate for anyone.
They used a family-wholesome channel, shut it down, cannibalised its signal, and installed a smutty adult channel. Now go figure.
When we had a TNN, I remember when POG was on. If MTV hadn't done its evil deeds, I could imagine Gary Chapman having Toby Keith and Daryl Worley being interviewed about their anti-UBL songs on his show. We could also have seen 4 Him, Point of Grace, Kathy Troccoli, Sandi Patty, and others also interviewed by Mr. Chapman. But thanks to MTV, all of it is gone.
Acquired: CMT in 2000
Acquired: BET in 2001
So MTV is bigger than you think: MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Spike, MTV2, VH1 Classics, BET, CMT.
This author is way over emphassizing Mtv's influence and power. As it is right now, once something is on Mtv then it is lame and boring. One thing that always bothered me, was the Tv show "The Real World". I always thought it was a show that tried to focus on making some kind of socialist utopia. Take a variety of different people that would never come into contact with each other in normal circumstances and put them in a dream house with all bills paid and no responsibility and see what happens.
But of course, they kept on fighting or not getting along. Then they continued to change the program, but it never worked. They made the people in the house get a job, which didn't work too good. Then they gave them money to start a business and that never even got off the ground. Then Mtv made them work at various places and doing various things, but the kids could never do that right. And they still continued to fight.
I broke down a few months ago and watched 'Pimp My Ride'. It's actually pretty good--another one of those build-something-wacky shows in the vein of Monster Garage/House. They don't push any politics or bad morals; it's just a bunch of mechanics tricking out (er, "pimping") a completely hopeless wreck of a vehicle.
Did I miss any?
I am one of the first Gen X'ers. I remember telling my fellow classmates in the early eighties they were idiots for watching a channel with 24 hours of commericals. I stil think videos are nothing but commericals. Not art or anything worthy of adulation. They are made to make you buy the product, they present a product to young minds and sell them an image. Look I watch junk TV too sometimes, but I remember how much MTV fouled up a lot of kids, wasting their time on this vapid mind rot.
Cable is a sewer pipe and I don't need it in my home.
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