I DON'T WANT MY MTV
by Del Harvey

A few weeks ago a friend was describing her experiences working at MTV in New York City. She was explaining why MTV hired predominantly 18-25 year olds in order to stay on the "cutting edge" of the youth movement.

My years of working for entertainment corporations triggered a gut response: "Rents in New York start at $1500 a month for a studio apartment. Young people 18-25 don't have the same overhead people in older age brackets do. I bet they don't pay these kids much."

She confirmed that MTV pays their employees poorly, and they rarely, if ever, give the kids a raise or keep them longer than a year or two. Still, she insisted that management's motives had less to do with stinginess than with maintaining the youthful edge. She made it clear that she believed that MTV would remain forever "hip."

Many years ago I was living in a garage apartment, my only entertainment a 12-inch color TV, with random colors at best. Having heard about this new, innovative television channel called "Music Television," I hooked into my landlord's cable line and waited, the test pattern silently adorning the screen.

Then, out of the screen there erupted some rough, loud guitar chords over a straightforward drum track, as a hyperactive spaceman bounced like an amped-out kangaroo across the moonscape and right into the screen. A voice-over, I think it was J.J. Jackson or Alan Hunter, said, "This is MTV, music television," and that was it - the entire nation of rock and rolling all-American kids from 6 to 60 was hooked.

The television remained on all night that first night. I know I passed out at some point, because I remember waking up to see some video by Pink Floyd. Quite an improvement over the first video ever to air on MTV: Video Killed The Radio Star, a much too prophetic choice.

It was pure ecstasy to see Independent bands on the screen Until now the only opportunity to see your favorite band, or any band you were interested in, was to pray they sold enough records to appear on some talk show or the old standby, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, a slightly hipper version of American Bandstand that came on at midnight on Fridays. Radio was only slightly better, mostly because the DJ's still had a little more opportunity to decide what they were going to play, instead of receiving some pre-selected playlist from an unseen corporate conglomerate.

This new station had no choice in one important area; they had to play anything they could get their hands on because most record companies were not making videos. Those that did must have had some visionary A&R people, because this additional exposure undoubtedly had some impact on certain groups' success. The Police seemed to put good amount of effort into their videos because they were consistently being talked about by the public and the media and they were winning video music awards. They also provided a steady supply to MTV, as did Blondie, Elvis Costello, and just about any performer worth their membership in the "New Wave" category. Unfortunately, this included the fascinating hair stylings of A Flock of Seagulls.

Even the VJ's, short for video jockeys, were likeable at first (well, except for Nina Blackwood - she deserves a column unto herself). We were so happy to see a music video we'd even put up with her. The other first VJs included Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson, Martha Quinn, and Mark Goodman, each of them as quirky and unique and probably as electrified by this new phenomenon as the audience.

Then, just as the video choices started improving, and we started to pick out our favorite VJs, the Powers That Be decided something was amiss. The Network was only a year old, but TV Execs are True Wizards, capable of mystic visualization we mere mortals can only imagine. And so it came to pass that our likeable VJs, those talking heads we were just beginning to get comfortable with, turned out to be "too old." Really? We didn't know! Some of them were over thirty! Apparently the flaunting of an effervescent young Adam Curry must surely have taught us the error of our ways, and the wisdom of TV execs.

So the pimple of truth had been exposed, and there was only one thing to do. And so, two years from its inception, we were offered up a new smorgasbord of delightful new VJs: Downtown Julie Brown, Kevin Seale, Kennedy, Adam Curry, and what became the first of a faceless new crowd aimed at the Gen-X, Rapping, Metal crowd.

The truth was that once the viewing audience reached the age of 25 we were no longer the buying demographic they were aiming for. We were too eclectic in our viewing tastes. Perhaps some record companies suggested that the public wasn't buying enough of a certain type of music. Maybe MTV could help change that?

Suddenly "music television" was less and less about independents getting exposure and more and more about selling the popular tune. How many times a day could we watch Madonna's Vogue? Or Salt-N-Pepa singing about life in the street?

Now it's Road Rules; Yo, MTV Raps!; and game shows. Game shows? "MTV" means Music Television, they promised. Instead it's a half hour every week about kids traveling the country and just being stupid. And the audience sits in front of the TV and buys whatever's offered to them, especially if it's force-fed to them in 20 servings per day.

Coincidentally, VH-1 has aired two specials in the past month that focused on those first two groups of MTV's video jockeys, tracing their "careers" since being given the boot by "youth oriented" MTV. In every instance and from both groups (even Adam Curry), the same message is expressed: "We got too old and they let us go." The contradiction here is that VH-1 is owned by Viacom, as is MTV, thus creating a self-effacing AND self-promoting paradox in broadcasting.

The other, unspoken, admittance here is that this network knows their "youthful" audience will watch anything or anyone as long as they're told it's "hip" and "fresh" and "current."

But the rest of us won't watch it because it is not hip. It's hype of the most mundane kind. And if it weren't bundled with my cable package, right there with QVC, the Christian Channel, and the other 200 pre-paid ads known as "info-mercials," I'd erase it from my television's memory banks.

Del Harvey, founder of FM, lives in Chicago. He is a devout Bears fan, and therefore deserving of our sympathy.

Got a problem? Email Del at filmmonthly@hotmail.com