How MTV Is Taking Music Back

Now that the reality TV explosion of the early 2000s has started to taper off, MTV has re-prioritized the music model they abandoned when music videos became stream-able online.

Written by Kasey Clarke

The original MTV logo compared to the modern one adopted in 2015. Photo courtesy of Canva

To younger millennials, MTV has always been a reality TV channel. For some reason, this is the source of a lot of animosity from kids of the 80s and 90s who hold a bitter nostalgia for when MTV was “good.” It’s futile to argue that MTV didn’t start to give music a backseat to its TV programming, but some remnants of its music driven identity hung on through the reality era and are now making a comeback.

Even if not to the same extent of its early days, MTV has retained a voice in music pop culture through the years. The main mechanism of this retention has been the VMAs, which received high ratings throughout the late 2000s. The 2011 VMAs marked the most watched broadcast in MTV’s history and included such memorable moments as Beyoncé announcing she was pregnant for the first time. However, in the past four years, the number of TV viewers for the VMAs has hit four consecutive all-time lows, according to its ratings history.

This has mirrored a channel-wide decline in ratings, less than 10 years after the Jersey Shore debuted and became its most successful show to date.

To combat this ratings decline, MTV is relaunching “Total Request Live” (more often called TRL), possibly one of MTV’s most iconic staple shows. “TRL” played the 10 most requested music videos of the day and was VJ-ed by its popular host: Carson Daly. “TRL” was revived in April 2017 but became renamed to “Total Request List” with a new pre-recorded format in April 2018.

Frequent changes reflected a faltering program that struggled to find its natural pace as a live TV program program due to an inability to keep up with the music news it originally set out to cover.. The show also faced a lot of criticism from old fans who wanted a true reboot of the old format. However, according to Grammy News, TRL did connect with the younger generation, garnering high ratings and social engagement from teens.

It has yet to be seen whether the new adaptation of TRL will kickstart young musician’s careers as its predecessor has done, but MTV has focused its new music spotlight elsewhere. MTV has directed more attention to its artist to watch program “MTV Push” that names a new artist to “push” each month. “MTV Push” is heavily featured on the MTV home website and YouTube as a series of performances and interviews from upcoming artists.

Drawing attention to upcoming artists has always been an effort by MTV as embodied by its now playing feature that would pop up on the bottom of the screen anytime music would play in the background of a show. This mechanism quietly promoted artists you wouldn’t expect to get attention during a guilty pleasure reality show (In fact, I was introduced to Wavves through season 3 of the Jersey Shore).

Maybe, and hopefully, now that its reality TV and music based shows have both had their heyday, decline in viewership, cancellations and revivals, MTV can balance its two most successful endeavors and enter a new age where it lives up to its name to bring us youth-oriented music andtelevision.