Everyone is calling this year's election the most important vote in decades. And we kind of have to agree with this "Everyone." But not for the reasons you would think, like providing health care, saving retirement accounts, battling global warming, and making either Delaware or Alaska relevant. But because in the media industry, it's creating a lot of firsts!
Yes, the faltering economy and collapsing ad market helped push MTV toward its decision to accept political advertisements for the first time in its history, but also this election is just too important to let media ethics get in the way of reaching young voters.
Also, while Esquire magazine has, in its entire 75-year history, never endorsed a candidate before, now they will! Not because they need to see some hot newsstand sales from a Barack Obama cover (oh, you thought they'd endorse McCain?), but because this election is just too important to allow readers to go without knowing whom the Esquire masthead wants to see in the White House.
And: CONTINUED »
MTV is at last acknowledging that the only people who still watch their station are pallid, sad hermits. Thus, their newest project: MTV Switch.
According to its Web site, "Switch is MTV Networks International's Global Climate Change Campaign. We'll be looking for the best ideas and innovations that can help us reinvent how we live in ways that are cool for us and the planet." Neato! What a hip and helpful way to continue pummeling the MTV brand into unsuspecting children's minds.
Judging by one of the Switch campaign's first ads, "Mud," MTV thinks the best way to promote getting outside and doing "cool" stuff for the planet is by playing to young mens' most base desires: big, wet breasts on stranded women. How cool and innovative, guys.
Mud after the jump. CONTINUED »
Can you believe we actually suffered through Paris Hilton's My New BFF last night? And — even crazier than that — we didn't feel the urge to stab ourselves in the eyes? We realized that once you sit through A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, you can sit through anything.
Anyway, the contestant who makes this show bearable is Onch, a jewelry designer from Hacienda Heights, Calif. Onch's favorite color is rainbow (seriously) and prefers the term "pomp" over "fabulous." Also? Onch is a male.
Let's face it: The only time you've ever heard the word "flux" used in a sentence was either a) to describe the economy or b) next to the word "capacitor" in Back to the Future. Which is why you'll have no idea why MTV just spent all of its TRL rent fund buying out Social Project. Social Project is the group which MTV previously partnered with to create Flux, a social media network. You know guys, a social media network like Facebook, or MySpace, or… another one of those:
CONTINUED »
Just when you thought MTV couldn't become more of a soulless corporation without transforming into subplot fodder for a John Grisham novel, the former hipness barometer outdid itself in one week by:
1) Canceling TRL, and with it the last shred of reasoning behind calling the Viacom subsidiary a music station.
2) Signing a contract that would allow them to stay at their Times Square location (that really only made sense to inhabit when TRL was on the air) with a $35-per-square-foot rent increase.
3) Destroying the rainforest for the sake of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge show that no one knew was still on the air:
CONTINUED »
Paris Hilton's ode to herself, MTV's Paris Hilton's My New BFF, debuts Sept. 30 with 16 women and 2 men competing to be her "paparazzi-ready" best friend. In hyping the show, Hilton says 300,000 people applied to be on the show.
Like the story she tells suitors about being drug and disease free, this is a lie. CONTINUED »
"Without 'TRL,' MTV Soon to be Music Free." That's the title of this afternoon's Washington Post live chat, where staff writer Monica Hesse will be answering your questions about the network in its post-TRL form. To be fair, MTV does air Friday night's FNMTV, a commercial disguised as a music video run down, and The Hills is responsible for breaking more bands than, well, TRL.
It's not that Total Request Live is ending for good — it's just that MTV has completely abandoned its commitment to showcasing music videos, and they'd like to take a moment or decade to reconfigure things after 10 years of counting down the Top 10 music videos that record labels lobbied the network to promote.
The ridiculous and accidental blockbuster popularity of MTV's Laguna Beach brought us The Hills, that reality show showcasing the lives of girls now too famous and wealthy to actually be the fictional versions they play on TV. And now that The Hills has performed the insurmountable task of keeping MTV semi-relevant, everybody else wants in. That's why Bravo is hunting for their own set of privileged West Coast youth and a production company is shooting a D.C. version as we speak. Even MTV, then, wants more of the magic. Enter The City, MTV's New York-based off-shoot of the show. Whereas The Hills took a group of pretty ladies from no-name status to insta-brands, The City will start off with a set of semi-known girls. Among them: CONTINUED »
Bravo has a rap sheet about thiiiiis long for stealing show ideas from other networks and making it work. Real Housewives of Orange County was nothing than Desperate Housewives with a pinch of The O.C. thrown in for good measure. Step it Up? More like So You Think You Can Dance: Vegas Edition. And you don't need to be told what the celebrity hosted (if Niki Taylor counts as a celebrity) model show Make Me a Supermodel ripped off.
The only thing the network can call it's own is Project Runway, and hell, they already lost that. So what's in development for the style-biting network next? Hint: It's not an original idea:
CONTINUED »
Sure, these days MTV is a heartless, godless whisper of what it once was, but don't say it's forgotten how to gorilla-pimp talented children.
This Monday, Engine Room, MTV's newest long-form commercial, will premiere and completely reinvent the exploiting-artists genre. Populated with ambitious computer whizzes, Engine Room takes four teams divided by nationality (!!!!!!!!!!) and pits them against each other in a digital design-off to see who can create the best artwork. "But how does this race baiting dogfight and the art it will produce make enormous whales even richer?" you're asking, well aware of MTV's MO. Where the cash comes in to play is in the computer hardware, all of which will be provided by Hewlett-Packard.
PCs are losing handily to Apples with the grownup-babies-who-buy-things-to-look-cool demographic – a huge demographic, by the way – and everyone except for Steve Jobs is looking for ways to appear "with it." So what better way to look cool and boost sales while exerting a piddling amount of creative effort than with a reality program on MTV? A program that promises a real live guest appearance by electronic vegan Moby? It's not like people are completely disgusted with that station's garbage yet. And wouldn't everyone love to see that smirk knocked off The Mac Guy's face? Everyone wins!
Best of luck to the Engine Room editors, the men and women whose job it will be to make viewers forget they're watching a bunch of sweating, anxious nerds make YouTube videos.
Is here, from TMZ.com's The Johnny Lopez: "Rock and Roll is officially dead when a spoiled brat from “My Super Sweet 16” would seem less out of place on the MTV red carpet than a band like Slipknot. [...] The last time the VMAs were even remotely fun was back in 2003 with the Britney/Madonna/Xtina kiss thing, then came the Miami and Vegas debacle years. RIP. Last year’s highlight – if you can call it that – was the world’s first live public crucifixion. So it’s only fitting that last night’s theme appeared to be redemption – at least as far as Britney and her armies of stylists and pharamacists are concerned. That being said, how can the show have any real clout when in reality, MTV’s best new artist is not a musical act – it’s Heidi and Spencer?"
Britney Spears teased Sunday's MTV VMAs in a series of spots with the evening's host, comedian Russell Brand. This caused everyone to speculate she was going to re-do last year's dismal performance. But then MTV issued a release, saying that while Spears will open the show, she wouldn't be performing.
And then MSN just happened to "get its hands on" this "secret Britney video" that shows the pop star rehearsing choreography to what sounds like a new (utterly terrible) track. Which feeds speculation that she will perform. At least she would have practiced the dance steps once or twice this time.
Hats off to MTV — because whether she dances on stage or not, they've got the blogs, and TV viewers, on the hook with suspense. Check back next week to see if Nielsen agreed.
If Kanye West were a politician he'd be a flip flopper. Since he's a mercurial, egotistical pop star, no one will pay that much attention to the fact that he has decided to return to MTV to close out Sunday's VMAs.
We thought Larry Rudolph put an end to the rumors about Britney Spears performing at this weekend's VMAs, but MTV won't shut up about it. According to the network, Brit will be opening the show, but "it is not a performance."
Editorial Director
