RIP: TRL

So's your face.

 

I always thought it was the, you know, lack of music that signaled MTV's death knell.

 

Well, maybe I told them that you smoke the ganja!

 

Well, yeah, but even though TRL showed videos, it wasn't ever about them at all. Having TRL as the network's centerpiece finally signaled that ratings were infinitely more important than the music.

 

I had a lot of issues with TRL, many of which have been mentioned here. But perhaps my biggest beef was with how the videos were selected. By no means do I believe these videos were chosen solely by the amount of "requests." There were other factors -- marketing, flavor of the month, sex appeal, etc. -- and when I heard of the videos' "retirements," that's when I knew for sure: This whole thing was stage to work as a big-business tool.

Back in the early part of this decade, I heard Carson Daly -- before Tara Reid; great, great eyes, by the way -- say, "Well, this is the last day for this video, ending its run of 61 straight days on the countdown, and it'll make room for Christina's next video ..." But, how is that possible? They've already got their videos selected for the next day? Absolutely. But there are rules.

At that time -- I haven't watched MTV, other than Parental Control, Next and that lame show IJAG told me to watch since my sophomore year of college, so things very well could have changed -- no artist could have more than one video on the top 10, which made sense, I guess, although it still does manipulate the countdown, in my opinion. So videos, per Daily's words back then, sit there and wait for their predecessors to fall off the countdown or "retire" so they can jump on the list. And many artists won't release their videos until they've got a spot on TRL. So I asked myself the question, again: How can these videos make the list if they've never been seen?

It's a huge sham -- well, it was -- and it really did infuriate me. Probably because I grew up watching MTV's Top 20, or whatever it was called, just waiting to see where Green Day's "Brain Stew/Jaded" hit -- usually 12 or 13. But every Saturday or Sunday, I figured the video was going to go down a little because a video, realistically, could never last six weeks on the list without a little bit of payola.

God, I hate(d) that show.

 

ther·a·py /ˈθɛrəpi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ther-uh-pee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -pies.
1. the treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.
2. a curative power or quality.
3. psychotherapy.
4. any act, hobby, task, program, etc., that relieves tension.

 

By the time TRL showed up, people had been saying that MTV wasn't worth shit for at least half a decade...but TRL really actually legitimately proved the point. It was at that point that MTV substituted music videos for showing the entirety of their current catalog on TRL, and so fail.

Damn. A decade old. Ahh, Meghan, you and me and the summer of '98, whatever happened to us...

 

the day i stopped watching mtv was the day undressed was cancelled. this barely registers on the radar for me.

 

Dammit, I miss that show.

 

You realize that won't help our poor Mikey, right?

 

The beginning of the end for MTV was Remote Control.

 

TRL was sweet back in the day when they played the whole music video.

I also remember one day in middle school when a bunch of my sixth grade friends and I went online with a whole bunch of other kids across the nation and voted for New Kids on the Block's the Right Stuff.

It was the No.1 song that day and Carson Daily officially retired it. He was a sweet host. Went downhill when he left. But man, its been a long time since those charts were topped with Brittany Spears, Backstreet Boys, N Sync, Korn and Limp Bizkit. Wow.