MTV

For other uses, see MTV (disambiguation).

MTV: Music Television

File:Mtv logo.png
Type	Cable network (Music/youth culture)
Country	United States
Availability	National; affiliated services available internationally
Owner	MTV Networks (Viacom)
Key people	Tom Freston - President, MTV Networks
Launch date	August 1, 1981
Former names	Sight On Sound
Official website	http://www.mtv.com

MTV: Music Television is a young adult cable television network headquartered in New York City. Originally devoted to music videos, especially popular rock music, MTV later abandoned music, and became an outlet for a variety of different material aimed at adolescents and young adults.

File:DSC01026.JPG

MTV's famous Times Square studio in New York

The network was founded on March 3, 1981 as an operation of Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, a joint venture of Warner Communications and American Express. WASAC, as it was known, consisted of two channels before the MTV launch: Nickelodeon, and The Movie Channel. In 1983, Warner and Amex spun off The Movie Channel to a company in parnership with Viacom, who contributed the pay TV channel Showtime. The new entity became known as Showtime/The Movie Channel.

In 1984, Warner and Amex attempted to take some cash out of their WASAC investment. WASAC was renamed MTV Networks Inc., and the parent companies registered for a stock IPO, which eventually went public at $15.00 per share. The same year saw the introduction of a sister channel, VH-1, short for Video Hits One. In 1986, MTV Networks Inc. was acquired by Viacom Inc., and was renamed MTV Networks, a division of Viacom. By 1987, Viacom itself was the target of a successful hostile takeover by National Amusements.

MTV's combination of music videos, youthful video jockeys, irreverent commentary, promotion of special rock concerts, and news and documentaries about bands and performers established the network's popularity with youthful viewers, and it became a leading promoter of new rock music and rock musicians. In the 90's, MTV was often considered to be the driving force in American musical pop culture, but this influence has dramatically declined.

History

Steve Fiorilla's sculpture for the animated MTV logo "Guillotine"

MTV's roots can be traced back to 1977, when Warner-Amex Cable (a joint venture between Warner Communications and American Express) launched the first two-way interactive cable TV system, Qube, in Columbus, Ohio. The Qube system offered many specialized channels, including a children's channel called Pinwheel which would later become Nickelodeon. One of these specialized channels was Sight On Sound, a music channel that featured concert footage and music oriented TV programs; with the interactive Qube service, viewers could vote for their favorite songs and artists.

On August 1, 1981, MTV: Music Television launched with a programming format created by the visionary music producer, Bob Pittman (who later became president and chief executive officer, of MTV Networks [1]).

It went to air with the words (by original COO John Lack) "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll!" Appropriately, the first music video shown on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles (often wrongly attributed to one of their contemporaries with a similar name, The Bangles). (With similar tongue-in-cheek humor, the first video shown on MTV Europe was "Money for Nothing," by Dire Straits, which starts and finishes with repetition of the line "I want my MTV," voiced by Sting; on MTV Latino, the first video shown was "We Are Southamerican Rockers" by the Chilean band Los Prisioneros.)

The early format of the network was modeled after Top 40 radio. Fresh-faced young men and women were hired to host the show's programming, and to introduce videos that were being played. The term VJ (video jockey) was coined, a play on the acronym DJ (disc jockey.) Many VJs eventually became celebrities in their own right. The original five MTV VJs in 1981 were Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn. In 2005, this group (except for J.J. Jackson, who had passed away in 2004) was reunited as hosts on Sirius Satellite Radio. Numerous animation studios created MTV animated logos, featuring work by such artists and sculptors as Ken Brown and Steve Fiorilla.

The early music videos that made up the bulk of the network's programming in the '80s were often crude promotional or concert clips from whatever sources could be found; as the popularity of the network rose, and record companies recognized the potential of the medium as a tool to gain recognition and publicity, they began to create increasingly elaborate clips specifically for the network. Several noted film directors got their start creating music videos, including Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and David Fincher.

A large number of rock stars of the 1980s and 1990s were made into household names by MTV. 1980s bands immediately identifiable with MTV include Eurythmics, RATT, Culture Club, Def Leppard, Duran Duran and Bon Jovi. Michael Jackson launched the second wave of his career as an MTV staple. Madonna rose to fame on MTV in the 1980s. Madonna is the most successful video performer in MTV history, and to this day she uses MTV to market her music.

In 1984 the network produced its first MTV Video Music Awards show. Seen as a fit of self-indulgence by a fledgling network at the time, the "VMAs" developed into a music-industry showcase marketed as a hip antidote to the Grammy awards. In 1992, the network would add a movie award show with similar success.

After MTV's programming shifted towards heavy metal and rap music, MTV Networks launched a second network, Video Hits 1 (VH-1), in 1985. VH1 featured more popular music than MTV. Today, MTV Networks also owns Nickelodeon, a cable channel airing children's and family programming.

File:Mtvmid90s.jpg

MTV in the mid-'90s, shortly before the transition to non-music programming

MTV started off showing music videos nearly full-time, but as time passed they introduced a variety of other shows, including animated cartoons such as Beavis and Butt-head and Daria; "reality" shows such as The Real World and Road Rules; prank/comedic shows such as The Tom Green Show, Jackass, and Punk'd; and soap operas such as Undressed. By the second half of the 1990s, MTV programming consisted primarily of non-music programming. In 2000, MTV's Fear became the first 'scary' reality show where contestants filmed themselves. The show ran for three seasons and spawned numerous imitations, including the currently running Fear Factor on NBC. In 2002, MTV aired the first episode of another reality show, The Osbournes, based on the everyday life of former, Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne, his wife Sharon, and two of their children, Jack and Kelly. The show went on to become one of the network's biggest ever success stories and kick-started a musical career for Kelly Osbourne, while Sharon Osbourne went on to host a talk show on U.S. television. In 2003, Newlyweds, another popular reality TV show that follows the lives of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, a music celebrity couple, began. It has run for three seasons. The success of Newlyweds was followed in June 2004 by The Ashlee Simpson Show, which documented the beginnings of the music career of Ashlee Simpson, Jessica Simpson's younger sister. In the fall of 2004, Ozzy Osbourne's reality show Battle for Ozzfest aired.

In 2004, MTV's parent company Viacom bought Germany's largest provider for music television Viva Media AG, thereby creating the largest company for music on the European mainland. In November 2004, MTV announced it would begin airing in February 2005 MTV Base in Africa, [2] thereby reaching the world's last major populated area previously not served by MTV.

In 2006, MTV plans to launch MTV Ukraine, to pursue the emerging music market.

See also: List of MTV Shows

Diversification

The advent of digital satellite and cable has also brought greater diversity including channels such as MTV2, which features the slogan "Where The Music's At." In the U.S., MTV2 initially focused on playing music videos and other music-related programming exclusively; in Europe, MTV2 plays specific genres of music (mainly alternative and rock). Viacom, parent company of the MTV Networks, is also behind VH1, which is aimed at celebrity and popular culture programming; and CMT, which targets the country music market. Robert Bartz is CEO of MTV enterprises. MTV recently broadcast a new Indian Pop Culture channel called MTV Desi and University-oriented channel mtvU.

See also: List of MTV diversification

International divisions

MTV Networks and Viacom have launched numerous native-language MTV-branded music channels to countries worldwide.

These channels include (but are not limited to): MTV Canada, formerly talktv; MTV UK and Ireland; MTV Spain; MTV France; MTV Germany; MTV Europe; MTV Portugal; MTV Adria; MTV Denmark; MTV Finland; MTV Italy; MTV Netherlands; MTV Norway; MTV Poland; MTV Romania; MTV Sweden; MTV Asia; MTV Japan; MTV China; MTV Korea; MTV Taiwan/Hong Kong; MTV India; MTV Latin America; MTV Brazil; MTV Australia and MTV Russia.

File:Music HD.jpg

MHD - Music: High Definition is a high definition channel that MTV Networks launched on January 16, 2006. Originating from a studio in Vail, CO, MHD features programming from all 3 music-themed channels owned by MTV Networks- MTV, VH1 & CMT. Thus far only Verizon's FiOS TV and Cox Cable have agreed to carry the channel. Cox systems carrying MHD as of March 2006 include Atlanta, New Orleans, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Phoenix. Mitsubishi Electric Digital Televisions (http://www.mitsubishielectric.com/tv) is the exclusive sponsor of MHD.

Criticism

In its early years, MTV was criticized for being discriminatory, since the acts it featured were nearly exclusively white. MTV executives countered by claiming that there were few—if any—promotional videos available from black and other minority acts, although artists such as Diana Ross and The Jacksons had been making music videos before MTV existed.

Some critics from 1981 to 1985 complained that the channel frequently aired videos by Hall & Oates—a white act with Motown and Philly soul influences, and heavy airplay on black radio—but not the black artists with whom they shared the R&B and dance charts.

Shortly thereafter, the network began heavily featuring videos from Michael Jackson's album Thriller, in particular "Billie Jean" and "Thriller", and Prince's album 1999, in particular the videos for the title track and "Little Red Corvette". Later, sister channel VH1 (introduced in 1985) would specialize in heavy rotation of black acts as part of its format.

Subsequently, MTV delved heavily into black musical acts, developing several hip-hop music-themed programs such as Yo! MTV Raps, and got rid of MTV X to make room for MTV Jams. In recent years, MTV has been criticized for playing too much rap and R&B.

Because of its visibility as a promotional tool for the recording industry, MTV has been criticized as overly commercial and accused of denigrating the importance of music in the music industry (replacing it with a purely visual aesthetic); this is an ongoing problem for punk and emo bands. As early as 1985, some musicians were criticizing MTV for these reasons, perhaps most famously Dead Kennedys with "MTV − Get off the Air".

MTV UK has recently been under fire as it no longer airs any daytime music videos, outside of parts of a few shows like Total Request Live and Making the Video, and focuses primarily on MTV produced reality shows such as The Osbournes and Punk'd. Many argue, however, that as MTV runs nine music channels in the UK, it has delegated music videos to its genre channels in a bid to differentiate itself from the competition of the fourteen other music video-oriented channels. Videos are also often played between other shows and at night.

The same criticism has also been made of MTV in the USA, with its dearth of music videos, and its stronger focus on reality shows such as Road Rules, The Real World, Laguna Beach, and others as well. The primary U.S. MTV channel does occasionally play music videos (albeit rarely) instead of exclusively relegating them to their genre channels.

MTV UK has also been attacked for over-use of on-screen graphics, such as logos, programme promotion and countdown timers, and its electronica-themed genre channel MTV Dance is often derided for playing a lack of dance music during the day, preferring a mix of pop-dance, pop, and R&B. Ironically, the channel has also been criticized for lacking programming.

Critics also claim that bands sell well because they get a lot of exposure on MTV, rather than MTV picking the best bands to promote; and that MTV has too much influence in the music industry. Although it could be argued that MTV is simply giving airtime to the most popular acts in a given country, the counter-argument could also be made that these acts get popular simply because of the exposure that MTV gives them.

There have also been some critics who have said that MTV promotes bad behavior (mainly premarital sex, violence, and recreational drug use) to the youth of America by embracing the behaviors of certain celebrities who are not good role models. Critics have said that MTV was like "pornography for children."

There are also critics of MTV and their reality shows such as NEXT, the game dating show that demoralizes individuals by making the daters complete various tasks and games only to be "Nexted" when they were not pleasing enough because of their looks. The show also airs homosexual daters, which can be seen as controversial.

MTV and VH1 drew heavy criticism for their coverage of Live 8, the multinational concert of musical artists which raised awareness for African debt relief. The broadcast of music was limited, as the network cut to its on-air personalities, celebrity interviews, and commercials in the middle of live acts. The epitome of this was the widely reported decision to cut to commercial during Pink Floyd's performance in London, which was bassist Roger Waters' first performance with the rest of the band since 1981. MTV VJ's came onscreen to talk during the first guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb," then cut back for a few seconds before playing a commercial. 1 Because of the criticism the channel received over this, both MTV and VH1 decided to show the whole 10-hour Live 8 concert again the following weekend, this time without any commercial breaks or VJ interruptions.

The channel also faced criticism in the wake of the Super Bowl XXXVIII half time show — which it had produced. This infamous halftime show featured the exposure of one of Janet Jackson's breasts, which was shown on live television. Afterwards the NFL indicated that MTV would not produce any further Super Bowl halftime shows, or any public event.

MTV has also come under criticism for being far too politically correct and sensitive when it came to censorship. This was most prevalent in the eventual decline of the hit show Jackass. The creators of Jackass often felt that MTV's producers did not let the show run its free course due to the excessive restraints under which they put the Jackass team. MTV has also heavily edited a number of music videos, frequently to remove references to drugs or weapons. Edits include "45" by Shinedown (it is renamed "Starring Down" and a good portion of the chorus is edited to eliminate gun references), "We Are All On Drugs" by Weezer (It is renamed "We Are All In Love" and lyrics are changed from "On Drugs" to "In Love", and "Hash Pipe" by Weezer (the word "Hash" is obscured, and the vocal has been edited to sound like "Half"). Also, the song "Four Kicks" by Kings of Leon has the words "guns" and "switchblade" censored in the chorus. The song Stinkfist by Tool was renamed "Track #1" since the title was considered "too offensive for public consumption"; one of System Of A Down's first videos "Sugar" was one of most censored videos, as it censored the words "mushroom", "Russian", and "anger", besides the usual censoring of "fuck" in the song.

Political influence

After so many shots to the network about the content of programmes, MTV started airing a plethora of political and economic shows. These shows included: "think MTV," which talks about current political issues such as gay marriage, the U.S. presidential election (two years ago the network spent a large amount of time on the 2004 election), and war in other countries, among other topics. MTV aired a popular band's Sum 41 trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, documenting the conflict there. The group ended up being caught in the midst of an attack outside of the hotel and were subsequently flown out of the country.

Other politically diverse programmes include True Life, which documents people's lives and problems, and shows an epilogue of after the show was shot; MTV News Specials, which centers on very current events in both the music industry and the world; and a lot of other shows based on the current times. It covered the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, airing programs focused on the issues and opinions of young people, including a program where viewers could ask questions of Senator John Kerry on live TV. However many people believe that MTV is biased towards liberals.

Cartoons

MTV has a history of cartoons with mature themes, the most notable probably being Beavis and Butt-head, and its spin-off, Daria. Most of its other cartoons have lasted only for a single season, despite usually being original and creative.

Some of the cartoons MTV has produced:

• Beavis and Butt-head
• Celebrity Deathmatch
• Clone High
• Daria
• Downtown
• Quads!
• Undergrads
• Cartoon Sushi
• Æon Flux
• The Maxx
• Spy Groove
• The Brothers Grunt
• Liquid Television
• 3 South
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series

Slogans

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

References in popular culture

• George Michael's "Freedom '90" makes reference to the pressures the network placed on visual image: "I went back home, got a brand new face / For the boys at MTV"

• The declining popularity of MTV was noted as Bart scrawled "I no longer want my MTV" in a Simpsons' season 9 chalkboard gag.

• Dire Straits' 1985 song "Money for Nothing" — at the start and end of the song, guest singer Sting repeatedly sung the the channel's slogan, "I Want My MTV".

• The song "MTV − Get off the Air" by the Dead Kennedys was a protest against the content and style of music that dominated MTV during the '80s.

• Bowling for Soup's "1985," contains the line, "Bring back Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana there was U2 and Blondie, and music still on MTV."

• Lyrics to Manowar's "Blow Your Speakers" include "Wrote a letter to the MTV/What’s goin’ on now/Don’t ya care about me."

• Lyrics to Avril Lavigne's "Skater Boi" include "she turns on tv/guess who she sees/skater boy rockin' up MTV."

• Lyrics to Reel Big Fish's "Don't Start A Band" include "And even if you make it all the way to MTV/I don't think you could take it all the bullshit and the greed."

• Lyrics to Becks "MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack" include "MTV makes me wanna burn flesh!/Having an orgy down in the satellite dish!"

• Cartoon series Megas XLR frequently features the destruction of billboards and other paraphernilia for a group called "PoP TV", whose symbol is clearly based on the MTV Logo. XLR was directed by Chris Prynoski, a former MTV animator whose own show (Downtown) had been cancelled by MTV years ago.

• The opening track on Pantera's "The Great Southern Trendkill" song with the same name include the lyrics, "Buy it at a store, From MTV to on the floor, You look just like a star, It's proof you dont know who you are."

• In the Eminem song "Without Me": "The FCC wont let me be, let me be me/ so let me see they try to shut me down on MTV/ but it feels so empty without me"

• The band Sublime made a song called "Don't Wanna Be No MTV Motherf***er". The lyrics to this song can be found here.

• In Canadian singer Esthero's 2005 song, We R in Need of a Musical Revolution, as an introduction she sings, "I'm so sick and tired of the shit on the radio/And MTV they only play the same thing/No matter where I go I see Ashanti in the video/I want something more."

Related Channels

• MTV2
• MTVU
• MTVX
• MTV Jams
• MTV Hits
• MTV Puerto Rico (owned by LIN TV, under license by Viacom)

See also

• MTV Generation
• MTV Europe Music Awards
• Much Music

External links

• MTV US
• MTVU
• MTV News US
• MTV International
• MTV Adria
• MTV Africa
• MTV Asia
• MTV Australia
• MTV Brazil
• MTV Canada (Coming in the first half of 2006)
• MTV Europe
• MTV Boradband Europe
• MTV France
• MTV Pulse France
• MTV Idol France
• MTV Germany
• MTV India
• MTV Indonesia
• MTV Italy
• MTV Hits Italy
• MTV Brand New Italy
• MTV Latin America
• MTV Netherlands
• MTV Poland
• MTV Romania
• MTV Russia
• MTV Thailand
• MTV UK & Ireland
• MTV Base UK & Ireland
• MTV Hits UK & Ireland
• MTV Dance UK & Ireland
• MTV Tempo
• MTV Networks Europe
• MTV Desi
• MTV Chi
• MTV Ringtones
• International Mobile Portal
• http://www.mtvexit.org/mtv3/index.html MTV's campaign against human trafficking