Forty years ago today, MTV introduced the world to the concept of music television with the matter-of-fact opening line, « Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”
Forty years ago today, a lowly cable network called MTV introduced the world to the concept of music television with the matter-of-fact opening line, « Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” On August 1,1981, when cable television was still in its adolescence, MTV famously unleashed a pop culture revolution with the prescient song, “Video Killed The Radio Star,” by the British synth-pop band the Buggles. At first ridiculed and facing resistance from an incredulous music industry, the infant cable network took the air for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. MTV sold just $500,000 worth of advertising and, according to the 2011 book, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, ran at a loss of some $50 million. The doldrums didn’t last long. P eddling everyone from Pat Benatar to a reinvented Rod Stewart and f ronted by a handful of suddenly famous veejays, it took just two years for MTV to cement its hold on the world, as music companies learned that airing videos sold records and began funneling free copies to MTV’s offices in Fort Lee, New Jersey, while lobbying the network for more air time. By the time it aired “Thriller,” Michael Jackson’s iconic,13-minute zombie mini-film, MTV was impossible to ignore. In 1984, the year after “Thriller” debuted, MTV was reaching 25.4 million households and had doubled its revenue to $109.5 million. A year later Viacom bought the network and by 1992, MTV had quadrupled its revenue and its reach across the U.S. But as reality TV was killing off MTV’s original video stars, the network that had defined an era risked losing its influence over a new generation of young people. It hopped on the reality fad in 1992 with The Real World. The show followed seven strangers living together in a New York City loft and came at a cost of less than $1 million per episode—about a third of what scripted TV cost to make. “We realized we couldn’t afford writers,” says former MTV executive Van Toffler. “[Hiring writers] cost the same [budget] we had for the whole season of the show. We said, ‘Well, we’re not going to use writers. We have the kids.’” The show triggered a torrent of programming that included the sophomoric stunt-show Jackass (2000-2002) and Ashton Kutcher’s celebrity pranks on Punk’d (2003-2015). In 2000 it created MTV Cribs, which gave an inside look at celebrity homes and in 2009, Jersey Shore, which in two years became MTV’s most-watched show ever as more than 8 million viewers tuned in to the third season premiere. But that too sputtered as the network tried its hand at scripted shows, which only showed that they still couldn’t wow its audience the way watching twentysomethings hook up on camera and yell at one another could. In the five years leading up to 2016, with the network in its third decade, ratings plummeted nearly 50% in its core 18-49 demographic, according to Nielsen, and the network’s operating revenue fell more than 17% to $1.15 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. The channel was placed in the hands of CEO Chris McCarthy, who embraced the ethos that Toffler says was its recipe for success through the decades: Don’t age with your audience, keep finding a new one for the shows you know already work. McCarthy, then 43, revived Jersey Shore, this time sending seven characters from the original cast to Miami for a reunion called Jersey Shore Family Vacation. He stuck with the theme, adding Floribama Shore and bringing back Total Request Live after a nine-year hiatus. He now oversees more than 60 MTV franchises airing around the world.
