Transcript
Bobby (0:00)
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human country fans. Austin is calling you. The iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One is back with an unbelievable lineup of country superstars and eligible Capital One cardholders get VIP treatment, early access to tickets, plus the chance to grab an access pass for a private pre show hang with one of the performing artists. Tickets and access passes drop Tuesday, January 20th for 4:48 hours only or while pre sale supplies last. Get excited and get all the info@iheartradio.com Capital One. Another episode of the Bobbycast where we'll talk about MTV and kinda the end of mtv. At least if you read the headlines, it's the end of mtv. But all only sort of and it ended quietly. No big farewell special, although it would have been cool had they done one no countdown I did see, I think it was someone from Dan Patrick's radio show say that they thought it would be cool that since MTV is ending and we'll get to what that means in a second. If MTV just started from scratch airing the very first video they ever played, which is video killed the radio star, even on a stream and they just ran it back as it aired, really no commercials. So it would air a little faster this time if you cut out the commercials, I mean probably what, 15% faster. But just randomly, if you went over to the stream, you would see what was airing on this date in 1987, this date in 1996. I think that would be pretty cool. I don't know that it would really warrant a full channel, especially because of what you're going to hear about next. But MTV is over. And at the end of 2025, MTV shut down its last remaining 24 hour music video channel worldwide. Whenever I saw that MTV was ending, I thought they were just changing the network because I think Paramount used to be Spike, used to be comedy, those networks on cable and less and less of us use cable as much now because there's so much streaming, there's so much YouTube TV, there's, you know, all these different things that it's. It's rarely just flip the channels like it was in the old days. But mtv, the channel isn't going away, the brand isn't going away, but they're just not showing music anymore. So MTV Music, MTV, 80s, MTV 90s, MTV Live, all gone. And so that's it as far as MTV, the M& music, meaning music television. There's no more music. So the brand still exists, the main channel still exists. But MTV has a place where music videos live on television. Completely over. Now if we go back and just do a little bit of history and what we're going to do in a few minutes, as well as Eddie and I are going to talk about our personal memories of MTV in the eras that we grew up. So that'll be fun. But I kind of wanted to walk through a little history here. MTV launches August 1, 1981. The first video is Video Killed the Radio Star. I think when you look back at history, you think that song must have been huge. The song wasn't that big at the time. It's now a, you know, trivia answer. You know, what was the first video ever played on mtv? And the band was the Buggles, but that song was kind of played as a testament. The videos were killing audio. That didn't quite happen, obviously, but it did force artists and songs to be more three dimensional, to either embrace the visual or get left behind. Artists and labels needed to now focus on not just making good music, but also branding the artist and branding the visual. So labels had to now invest millions of dollars on the things that we could see. The videos, the production, the hair, the makeup. So there are multiple ways now to break an artist that there really wasn't. But also it costs a lot more money as well. MTV in the 80s started gaining momentum and it started in 81. But I would say around 83, 84, it really popped because you got to remember too, it wasn't on everybody's cable and not everybody even had cable back then. So it was very much a slow process to get MTV. But around 83, 84 is when it really started to become a cultural phenomenon. And if I were to assign artist pillars to this era, it would be three artists. Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. Now, they were the pillars then, not just because they were super popular. They were. I mean, there were plenty of artists that were popular, but because they had, I would say, a deeper, a more rich vision as artists, because they were already not just singing into a camera. I mean, they were already doing three dimensional art. So Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. And we'll start with Michael Jackson. When Michael Jackson put out Thriller, it wasn't meant to just be played in a three minute clip in between two other videos. It was not your standard video. Nothing about it was standard. There really wasn't a super standard because music videos hadn't been around a long time, but because they were all figuring it out, they were all pretty much the same. You just got on a microphone and you sang in front of the camera. And sometimes you cut Shots. But Michael Jackson put out thriller. It's 14 minutes long. Thriller has a spoken dialogue which is wild now, but at the time groundbreaking. There was actual, like acting. Music videos were new at the time. Spoken dialogue just wasn't done, especially between folks. Sometimes, I guess the artist would talk to the camera just for a couple seconds before the video started. But this video also had a full storyline. It had movie level makeup. It was directed by John Landis, which again at the time is something else that was completely absurd for a music video. That just wasn't how that worked yet. Music videos, again, quick play the song cheap. Basically commercials. Thriller did not feel like a commercial for many reasons. The length, the artist, the financial investment, which I mentioned earlier in things that did not involve simply music. I mean, this was a big deal for the label too, to pay that much money towards this project when there really hadn't been a project like this that had been successful ever. So it was big for Michael Jackson, it was big for Thriller, it was big for the record label, it was big for the art, but it was also big for black artists. Early MTV had avoided playing a lot of black artists. And they would use excuses like, it doesn't fit our format. That excuse kind of stopped whenever Thriller hit. And not because of a moral awakening, but because ignoring it would have been bad for business. After Thriller, music videos weren't just background noise somewhere, but there was a level that you could reach if you invested in your art and your creativity and financially. And these videos were now part of the identity of the artist. That the video created a standard. That video created a standard. I hate to say the word standard again. So I would say more than a standard, because a standard is something that other videos now meet and no other videos really met it. But the new standard was if you're gonna make a video, people expect vision, art, something more than just lip syncing the song. So I apologize for saying standard four times because it was more than the standard, it was the ceiling. The next pillar is Madonna. Madonna understood something very early that a lot of artists get now because we have social media and we've been able to see it through trial and error. And you can just fire off a lot of things because social media is easy and you're connected with people immediately. This wasn't the case back in the 80s. What Madonna got was how engagement works now. You couldn't, you know, hit reply to her music video, but a lot of engagement because people would send letters in. There was a tension that was felt from Madonna's Music videos. And she knew that. She knew that tension was rewarded. Madonna, 30 years ago, over 30 years ago, understood that MTV rewarded tension. And that's what people now do all the time. I mean, it's really how you rage. A bait. I mean, that's just tension, right? It wasn't approval she was looking for. She knew that she would get it from some, not from others. But it was tension that she wanted. So, for example, she performed like a virgin at the VMAs in a wedding dress. And that. That irritated a. A lot of people. She was rolling around on stage in it. And this was not impulsive. She didn't just throw on the dress right before and. And think, well, I wonder what will happen here? Because it wasn't reckless. It was very deliberate. She wasn't trying to shock for the sake of shock. She was trying to create conversation because she knew that getting talked about was currency. It made parents uncomfortable. It made critics loud one way or the other, either saying they didn't like it or saying they loved it and that the people that didn't like it were just old and out of touch. And it kept kids interested in one of the music, and if not the music, hopefully her. And if not the music or her, just interested in the controversy that it brought. And that combination was powerful. You know, before Madonna, a lot of female artists were shaped by other people. And this still happens today, some as well. But before Madonna, labels would tell a lot of the female artists who they needed and who they would be. Producers would do the same. The expectations were often, we need a female artist to be this kind of person, so we will make you to be this way. Madonna flipped that dynamic. She wasn't reacting to the attention. She was more directing the attention, like purposely creating it. The sexuality wasn't accidental. The religion wasn't a decoration. It was all about control, and it was all about her controlling the narrative. She showed that if you could be controversial and also still put out quality product, that she and the next artist could actually be, let's say, steering the car. MTV did not make Madonna provocative. Madonna showed MTV and America and the world how to weaponize being provocative. And once that was clear, I think a lot of other artists saw it, emulated it, tried it, some successful, some not. I think there are a lot of artists that have been heavily influenced by Madonna. Lady Gaga is one. I think Lady Gaga is definitely her own person. But it's, you know, she walks on the shoulders of the giants who got her there. So Madonna would be pillar two, and I Mentioned Prince at Pillar three and when I was coming up with reasons why Prince was a little harder one. I gotta say, all these artists made great, great music. Now you don't have to like their music, but they all made great decades genre lasting music. The thing about Prince is he never really explained himself. Prince wasn't a single genre. I mean, if I were to go, what genre is Prince? You could say pop. But if you're a fan of musicianship, you don't put him in that because he's one of the greatest musicians, like with an instrument of all time. I mean, there was rock for sure, there was pop for sure, there was funk. He was a singer, he was a performer, he danced, he was a lead guitarist, he was masculine, he was feminine. So where do you put him? He didn't care, just know his name and then know the name that he wasn't once he changed his name. But that's a whole different story. In the end, Prince just made great music. He didn't care to be understood. He didn't ask to be assigned to a certain genre. He was put in a lot of them, but he just cared to make art. And because his musicianship was so strong, MTV couldn't edit him into something that was more digestible. They had to let him be strange, they had to let him be uncomfortable, they had to let him be brilliant, they had to let him be purple. That sent a message to other artists that were watching. If you're good enough, you don't have to sand yourself down. I think Prince, had he just been a guitarist, would be one of the greatest guitarists of all time. But because he was so much more, he's not even really lumped into that conversation. Because he was such a great songwriter, great performer, just great artist, but just his guitar skills alone. I think Prince is one of the greatest guitarists to ever play. There is a video, I believe it is Prince and Tom Petty and a lot of artists playing while my guitar gently weeps. I'm pretty sure that's the video. If you look that up on YouTube and you watch it, I think you'll be blown away. And also you can just look for other artists talking about Prince being a guitarist. And they all say the same thing, that he's one of the greatest guitarists to ever live. Prince did not make MTV cooler. Prince made MTV more flexible. And why those three Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince matter together. Michael Jackson showed that visuals could hold attention longer than just sound. And MTV was already trying visuals, but like real dedicated, invested in visuals. Madonna showed that Image could be intentional and controversial and not accidental. And Prince showed that expression didn't have to be explained to be valid. And a lot of expression you would assign to how you were feeling because you wouldn't know exactly why he was expressing that. But you still resonated. It still resonated with you. That was MTV in the 80s. That set it up for the 90s. This is when I watched it the most, obviously. I remember once when I was in Hot Springs, I think I was 18 or 19 years old, the cable network that we had, I don't remember the name of it, they didn't have mtv. And I think one of the first, if I do finger quotes, stunts that I ever did as a radio personality was I got MTV added to the cable system where we lived in Hot Springs because they didn't have it. And I'm not sure if it's because Hot Springs, Arkansas was very traditional. They didn't care for mtv. They didn't care about the values of mtv, rock and roll, hip hop, because we did have cmt, but we did not have mtv. And I created a petition and had thousands of signatures in a small town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. And I took it to the cable company and they added mtv. I haven't thought about this in forever, but that was the first thing that I ever did that was I, I would say newsworthy. It's not really newsworthy, meaning it wasn't of like significant value. But it did make the news. And it was one of those first early things that I did where I thought, dang, I kind of have a voice. And not a physical voice, but a voice that can actually take people that have like minded ideas, combine them and make change. And that's when I started watching MTV, my VJ class. And I didn't talk about this in the 80s because I didn't. I know them now a little bit, but I didn't watch it in the 80s. Mine in the 90s were Carson Daly and Dave Holmes and Kurt Loder would do the news. And Jesse, I think Jesse won the wannabe VJ competition and Dave Holmes finished second. When I think of the 90s, I think of MTV Unplugged. I loved the series. It might have even started in the 80s, I don't know. I watched almost all of them in the 90s. TRL. I would be in college and I watched TRL most days. And maybe I was a little too old for trl, but it wasn't like I was a big winner anyway. But I watched all the TRL I think of the boy bands. When I think of MTV in the 90s, obviously the boy bands, Backstreet Boys, NSync, 98 Degrees, LFO. They launched so many of those careers. And I'll add Real World because of its significance. Even though I never really watch Real World, I was never a massive fan of. And maybe because I just worked a lot, I didn't have a chance to watch shows that I had to keep up with because it's not like we had DVR back then. So I think I just didn't keep up with it enough. But I'll mention Real World. So my three would be MTV Unplugged, trl and Boy Bands. But I'll add Real World because it was significant. Let's do MTV Unplug first. Why it was amazing to me is because it slowed things down. And that doesn't sound super radical now, but at the time it was no effects, no dancers, no quick cuts, just artists sitting down, playing songs for the most part that people already knew, and sometimes exposing parts of songs not only lyrically, but the meanings in a way that it wasn't super obvious before. And you could hear mistakes, you could hear nerves, you could hear how good someone actually was. And that mattered in the 90s because image was everywhere. Videos were polished at this point. Performances were tight, everything felt produced. MTV Unplugged cut through that. My favorite MTV Unplugged album ever is also one of my favorite albums ever, period. It's Nirvana Unplugged and more about that later. If I go over to trl, which is Total Request Live, it does sound simple. Now, when I was making notes about it, it's a countdown. Fans vote. Videos go up and down the list. But at the time, it felt live in a way that TV rarely did back then. And you watched it after school. For me, I watched it in the middle of classes. I was in college in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and I would go back and I would watch trl. I was also working at a pop radio station at the time. And I don't want to have an excuse because I like trl. And a lot of times it was the only way I knew what these artists looked like, especially the ones that were just launching. And, you know, you talk to other people who watched it at the same time. You talk about who hit number one. And maybe I just think of me doing that because I would go on the radio and have to talk about this stuff. You talk about who fell, who showed up in the studio, who didn't show up in the studio, and all the people that would pile up outside the window was always super cool. And I never went to New York at that point. I'd never been to New York anyway. It was way later in life that I went to New York for the first time. But I always thought it would be cool to go and stand outside and look up in the window. I thought that'd be so cool. Because if there was a big artist, or even a pretty big artist, or even no artist, there would still be people out there. But I remember the boy band days. It would be thousands and thousands of people. Even like Limp Bizkit when they were popping, and Britney Spears. So it would just be, you know, 75 aisles of people deep. Maybe more than that. The boy bands, though, I keep talking about that. I mean, TRL launched them. The boy band videos were played all the time. And I'm going to be honest, back then, I hated them until I submitted to, yeah, I think I might actually like them. And TRL was a massive part of the boy band revolution. And boy bands were a massive part of the TRL revolution. TRL made fandom visible. When I talk about how many people would be outside, you would see it, and then you'd have an understanding of just how famous these people actually were. And again, this is without social media, screaming, crowds outside, signs in the audience, fans knowing or learning every move, every rumor, every hairstyle change. MTV didn't tell people to care. It actually showed us watching at home that other people actually cared about. So trl, Massive. And we can talk about the real world for a second. Only because it created the template for the next 30 years of reality television. And this is for someone who didn't watch the real world. I mean, the real world did it. I've had trouble saying world, like, four times now, but no scripts, no prizes, no competition, Just people living together and being uncomfortable on camera. It felt awkward. But that awkwardness turned out to be the point of it. And most of you guys listening now probably remember the late 90s or some even 2000s on MTV. I mean, the 2000s were definitely when music shifted off of MTV. Jersey Shore, the Hills, the Challenge. But that started as Road Rules All Stars, which was Road Rules, but all that. But when I think about MTV in the 80s and the 90s, I don't think about it as a channel that just played music. I think if I were a little older, I would. Because that would have been most of what my watching was. But I think about it as a place that decided to show everybody what everybody else cared about. In the 80s, it taught artists how to be seen. It taught us we could actually see the artists more than possibly a random page of a magazine, because that would be the only time, really, you would see them. Unless they were doing Saturday Night Live or a network television spot. In the 90s, it became routine. You turned it on and you trusted it to show you what mattered that day. The 2000s, definitely different. There was still a little music, but then all those shows it created and ridiculousness 20 hours out of 24 hours a day. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. And we're back on the Bobbycast. So you missed the first part of this. I was talking about mtv, and MTV is done. Have you heard that? No, they cut the network.