When MTV went downhill - History of MTV

Ray Cokes, nutty host of
MTV's Most Wanted

If you checked out my last entry "Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins playing Twister", you might remember this took place at a time when MTV, although not always playing music, still had its heart in and gave a rat's rectum about music. Even when they did silly cartoons and hosted studio shows, it always had a strong relation to music. Beavis and Butt-head watched and commented music videos, MTV News was a news programme mainly covering music, and guys like Ray Cokes had bands and artists over for interviews and some jolly fun games in his daily show MTV's Most Wanted. It was always entertainingly unprofessional and unpredictable, in a good sense.

Then, in 1992, The Real World come...

The Dawning of Reality TV

From the "Where are they now?" section:
The Real World ensemble of yesteryear.

What the TV tableau's flooded with these days, was a completely fresh treat for the MTV generation. Sadly, this was also the last time MTV broke any new ground in the history of television. MTV's very first reality TV show The Real World became a great success for the TV station, and still is. The reality niche would later become a safe zone for MTV, a format which they mastered like no others. And with The Real World  still being around, it's also the longest running reality TV show to date.

1991: MTV Realises that Reality Sells

Back in the early 90's, at the other hand (the golden age of MTV) - they were the young and bold renegades in TV who had the nerve to disregard all professionalism and convention. I still remember their old slogan "Lead, Don't Follow" from w-a-y back. And look now where it took them... Pretty much nowhere, sadly. Looking back, something clearly went wrong along the road.

As much as I love both Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins, this circa-1991 video (watch here) you watched earlier, might have been the starting point of this nasty downward spiral...
It's not hard to imagine how crowd-pleasing the moment when the biggest acts in grunge and alternative rock could be seen being just themselves, just hanging around playing games - on TV! But then MTV apparently realised that even the average Joe (just being the average Joe), had the same appeal. Thus, we saw the dawn of the unpleasant new genre we know today, called "reality TV."

Snooki - the new face of MTV

The Unpleasant Aftermath

Several years after The Real World got on air, other stations followed; jumping on the bandwagon, making their own reality TV shows. Soon the concept of putting a bunch of frisky youngsters together in an apartment or villa (with some gallons of booze for company), sadly became the norm in TV made for teens and young adults.

YouTube - The New MTV

Apart from the still ridiculously enjoyable Beavis and Butt-head and a few bland music awards each year, what's else been worth watching on MTV over the last, say 5-10 years? Instead of producing decent, creative content for (seemingly) a few bucks a day, they persist in doing what everyone was entirely fed up with a decade ago. Luckily, the YouTube generation is here to pick up where the old school MTV lost it. They're the ones who now bring the interesting and entertaining, creative content to the table. On an even tighter budget than the TV channel in question.

Why they still go by the name MTV is honestly beyond me, though. There's clearly no 'M' in 'Reality', as far as I'm concerned..?
/theJo