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- [00:04]
Dan Runcy
I'm Dan Runcy and you're listening to trapital. The network lost most of its cultural relevance years ago, but there've been a few big blows in 2025 that are worth discussing. First, the Paramount Skydance Media merger. MTV's parent company, Paramount Global, merged with Skydance media earlier in 2025. The new company is led by Skydance Media CEO David Ellison, who has made a few big changes across the network since taking over, like acquiring the Free Press, changes to CBS Evening News, an exploration to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, and changes at MTV as well. I can only imagine how Ellison and team reacted when they saw the tens of millions of dollars annually at that MTV was paying Rob Jyrdek to host ridiculousness on the network. And how many hours per day ridiculousness was on TV. Well, after 14 years and over 40 seasons, ridiculousness will end its run on MTV at the end of 2025. 2025 will also be the end of all global music channels on MTV. But 2025 was also a first for MTV. It was the first year that the network's flagship awards show, the VMAs was were aired on CBS. CBS. Now, to be fair, that decision can't be looked at in a vacuum because while the VMAs may now be on CBS, CBS is also losing the Grammys after February 2026. So they likely wanted to have some awards show to capture that audience. But still, it says a lot about MTV and MTV's own ability to capture an audience for its own award show. So it's a great time for us at Trapital to revisit our 2023 breakdown on the 40 year history of MTV. But before we get there, I do want to mention a few quick things that people often forget and overlook about mtv. One of the biggest complaints that you probably hear from people whenever MTV comes up in a conversation is why did MTV stop playing music videos? Why did they go away from them? But here's the thing. MTV didn't abandon music videos to sell out. They did it to survive. And MTV figured out that harsh truth back in the 80s. If people don't like a music video or the genre that's playing, they'll change the channel. And if they change the channel, they may not go back to MTV in that same viewing session. MTV knew it and they knew they needed a different type of program. In 1987, they tested the waters with a game show called Remote Control. And they really cranked it up in 1992 with the debut of the reality TV show the Real World. The ratings for the real world were three times higher than music videos. Three times higher. Even better, the viewers stuck around for the entire episode. MTV finally had its own appointment viewing program. Plus, MTV didn't own the music videos. The music companies licensed them to mtv. But now MTV could create their own franchises and their own IP instead of renting it from the music companies. Plus, here's another part that no one talks about. MTV's non music video content helped stabilize the network during the dark days of the music industry. From 1999 to 2009, the recorded music industry's revenue dropped by 50%. But MTV still had one of its strongest decades ever. While the record label was shrinking those budgets from music videos, spending less money on marketing, and consumers were taking less trips to Tower Records, people were still turning on MTV to watch jackass. And in 2009, one of the worst years in the music business, MTV had one of its biggest shows ever with Jersey shore. And in 2011, the VMAs had their highest ratings ever. It's easy for those that grew up in the 80s and 90s to reminisce about the days when MTV actually played music videos. But from a business perspective, it's hard to blame MTV for leaning into reality TV and non music video programs. This isn't about serving people's ideal desires. It's about serving their actual behavior. So when I think about how MTV lost its edge, it's not because they didn't play enough music videos. It's because they stopped winning at reality tv. And frankly, Bravo stole that throne. This past decade, MTV leaned all the way in into ridiculousness. It was easy to produce, cheap to replicate. It was comfort food for that MTV audience. And there's a lot of complaints about how they just showed ridiculousness over and over and over. And they did go overboard. But that really wasn't the issue. Fox News, espn, cnn, they all play the same stuff over and over as well. They're different personalities, but they're all talking about the same issues, the same topics day in and day out. But that said, there was still some variety there. But MTV put all its bags into that one basket of ridiculousness. Meanwhile, Bravo built an empire. And by 2022, Bravo had nearly doubled MTV's average viewership. And they did it with franchises of shows. Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck, Real Housewives, Shahs of Sunset, the list goes on. They even have BravoCon, an entire convention dedicated to the fans that watch their shows. A lot of those fans, frankly, are those that 25 years ago were watching shows like the Real World and Road Rules. Why couldn't MTV have continued to tweak the model that worked with Real World, Road Rules, Jersey Shore, all of those dating shows, and all of the others that kept audiences hooked? The challenge wasn't that ridiculousness existed. It's that it was so narrow, it was so focused on that young male audience. But if you zoom out to Bravo, a lot of that content was for women. And the problem wasn't that MTV had a cash cow, but they just relied so heavily on it. And this is the network that used to have multiple franchises themselves. They had it, they lost it. And the other networks showed that even during the age of cord cutting and the transition to streaming, there was still an audience to be had for reality TV on cable. Bravo understood this, E understood this. And the economics still may not be perfect there, but. But they're in a much better spot than MTV is right now. And despite the haters who may criticize mtv, why they didn't play more music videos. Again, that was not the problem. MTV proved that it could capture an audience and build a real business that wasn't fully dependent on music videos. But how did they lose that? They stopped innovating. They became more reactive than proactive. And now there's no global music channel. The cash cow is ending, and they can't even be the exclusive home to their own awards show. There are plenty of what ifs, but there was still plenty of brilliance in how MTV pulled off all of the dominance that it had in the 80s and 90s. It's one of the reasons. This is one of my favorite breakdowns we did and why I think it was so popular with so many people. And again, we only kept the good stuff for you. But here's our abbreviated version of the 40 plus year history of MTV. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
- [07:33]
This episode of Trapital is brought to you by Splice, the leading platform for music creation. Splice is now seamlessly integrated with ableton Live Suite 12.3, bringing patented discovery tools and the renowned sounds catalog directly into one of the world's most trusted digital audio workstations. Producers can browse, audition, and drag splice samples straight into projects. Plus use the search with sound to find harmonically compatible sounds without leaving their session. Learn more about Splice and Ableton by clicking the link in our show notes.
- [08:09]
Molly
All right, today we are back to talk about one of the most influential companies in the history of the music industry. That's mtv. And here to break it down with friend of the pod, Zach Greenberg. And Zach, I got to ask you, do you remember the first time that you watched mtv?
- [08:26]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
It was funny. I just remember like going to other kids houses and it'd be like, oh yeah, you wanna watch TRL or something? And just having my mind blown by like this whole other dimension of music that was showing up that just didn't otherwise make it into my life. And it really was. It was like seeing music in the third dimension. And so it totally makes sense that MTV had this incredible impact on our generation.
- [08:50]
Molly
Yeah, mine was mid-90s LL Cool J Stew. It was played at the time. At that age I was still watching Nickelodeon, Fox, Kids, Disney channels. I really wasn't tuned into that. And that was just, whoa, what is this? But it probably wasn't until a few years later when it really became more of a regular viewing for me. But wow, what a journey. And we're going to get into all of that. But I think the best place to start with this is even before MTV gets started. Late 70s and music videos really weren't even called music videos at the time. The term that was often used was promotional clips. And there was this vision by this guy, Don Lack. He was an executive at Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment company, which is a mouthful. They had Nickelodeon, the movie channel. But he saw this overlooked opportunity. He felt like there was shows and programming out there for kids, there was shows and programming out there for adults, but there really wasn't as much for teens. He's experimenting on a few different shows and then that brings him to pop clips, which ironically was on Nickelodeon of all places, to then give them a preview of what's there. People get a sense for it and apparently the ratings take off. And at that point, that's when they said, okay, we have something here. We need to build this up a little bit further.
- [10:09]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah. Ultimately, MTV was a joint venture between Warner and American Express. Which is wild when you think about that. Like American Express getting into what MTV turned out to be. But the idea of the music video back in the day, it was just a throwaway thing dating back in the 70s and nobody really put much thought into it. And in a funny way, music videos today have drifted back toward what they were back then. Now that it has been de. Emphasized a little bit. But when you think about the greatest videos, like what are the videos that stick it into your mind? Certainly for me, like all of the great videos came out of the 80s or 90s or the early aughts, this kind of golden age of music Videos brought on by the resident tv.
- [10:48]
Molly
Because if you look back at some of those videos, sure, you had videos like Bohemian Rhapsody, which did stand out. That, of course, is a video that came in the 70s. But for a lot of what stood out, it's like talking heads that are floating in this black drop. A lot of it was just these grayscale videos of bands performing in front of a tv. And the experience of someone watching a musical performance on TV was seen as the live thing. Right. Are you going to get on American Bandstand, Soul Train, Phil Donahue. The thought of having a standalone, prerecorded clip that you then put out and share just wasn't something that people necessarily were thinking deeply about.
- [11:29]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways it was a proxy for touring. Like, you would put out these promotional clips to try to make it in markets where you didn't necessarily have an audience. Or maybe you would use them to sputter up, like a regional audience before you announced tour dates there so that you'd increase the ticket sales. And I think also in those days, a lot of people forget, but, like, you go on tour to promote an album, right? Now you put out an album to promote a tour, right? Because back in the day, you'd make the money on the records. Now you make the money on the road very different than it is today.
- [12:00]
Molly
You also have the rise of cable, too. You're starting to see more options beyond what's just happening from a broadcast perspective. You're seeing more unique channels, which obviously paved the way for Nickelodeon, for the Movie Channel, for some of the things under that Warner Amex umbrella. So once they decide to get this going, Lack then hires Bob Pittman, who was a former radio guy himself. And that was a common theme that we saw with mtv. And they're thinking of names, they're thinking of Rockbox, they're thinking of TV one. And MTV Music Television did seem pretty basic, but they eventually were able to make it work. And they had this whole concept where they're like, okay, what is the thing that we want to do to make a statement? So they said, okay, can get footage of the moon landing. Literally one of the most iconic visual moments that you've ever seen on video from the 20th century. They have that plant the MTV flag, and then they're off to the races. I do want to talk a little bit about the business model. Because their whole pitch was, we're going to get the record labels to give us the videos for free. We view ourselves as visual radio in the Same way that they give the radio stations that for free. They wanted them to do the same. The record labels told them to kick rocks. But eventually that changed over time.
- [13:14]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
It's not different, too different from the social media model. Let's get celebrities to give us free content that will make people watch our thing, and then we can sell ads against it. So it's a brilliant business model, a precursor to Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever, right? You're having suddenly a generation of kids being able to see their musical heroes up close. The creators are putting this stuff out for free, right, and giving it to the network, the platform, and then they're selling ads against it. Really a business model. Labels were not so keen on it early, but it went from a phase of MTV begging labels to send over videos to labels begging MTV to air the videos. What happened in in the in between is like the most interesting part.
- [14:00]
Molly
It was a big splash at first. You have the Buggles video, Killed the Radio star. Perfect song to kick things off.
- [14:05]
Dan Runcy
But there were only, depending on who.
- [14:08]
Molly
You ask, some say they only had a hundred. Some say they had 250 music videos. But that was all they had at the time. So there was a lot of repeat. There were a lot of artists who leaned in. Then they made out of Water. Rod Stewart just had a bunch that he just wanted to submit. And then similarly, a lot of the British artists leaned in even before the American artists did. So there was a lot of Duran, the Police. They called it the British Invasion. But the thing is, those couple years were a little bit tough for mtv. This was from the I Want My MTV book. Bob Pittman had said that they only sold $500,000 worth of ads in that first year. And they just had a hard time getting advertisers bought in to some of the videos themselves. Things are racy and the network definitely had its challenges. But I think there were two things that we can dig into. One was the I Want My MTV campaign. And then the second was Michael Jackson's Thriller.
- [15:01]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, absolutely. Although I would say Billie Jean paved the way for Thriller. And the story of that is one of my favorite stories in the history of music. If you look at the money behind the business, right, it wasn't doing so well in terms of selling ads in those early days. However, MTV goes on air August of 1981. 300 hundred cable outlets, audience of 2.5 million homes. But within a year, it's up to 2,000 affiliates, more than 17 million households, the capacity to sell ads, even if you're not selling it for that much on a per ad basis, your audience is so huge, massive amounts of space to place ads, eyeball to get on those ads. So you had this machine that was just ready to start churning out money and all you needed was to generate more interest. Right. And I think that I want my MTV campaigns was just a brilliant way of doing that. All these different artists coming in and just saying that phrase and singing that phrase in their own sort of different ways.
- [15:55]
Molly
It made perfect sense because you then have the fans calling their local cable providers to then be like, hey, not only do I want cable to come through to my area, but I also want you to make sure that you're adding mtv. Because that was a whole thing growing up, too. You may not have gotten certain channels on your cable stream. The Disney Channel didn't come in, like, certain areas. And it wasn't until the late 90s that you had like, digital cable and all these expansions.
- [16:20]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, that's another great thing for the business model. If you have cable companies paying you for mtv, you just get to expand it at such a rapid rate and you're getting all this free content. The ad campaign was huge. You still had this issue of MTV being pretty segregated, Right. They weren't playing hip hop. Maybe they were playing like a little bit of Lionel Richie. But it was almost exclusively white rap artists. And along comes Michael Jackson with Billie Jean. And Michael Jackson was always really interested in film. He never liked to call his music videos music videos or short films. This Billie Jean video was a total masterpiece. And he really wanted to make sure that it got on mtv. So I wrote about this in my book Michael Jackson ig. Walter Yaknikov was the head of CBS Refuge at the time, which had Michael Jackson was this, like, caricature of an 80s record executive and cocaine all over the place, constantly drinking and philandering and messing around. But to his credit, he really wanted to defend Michael Jackson out of self interest. He wanted Thriller to be huge. He knew how great it was. And he also wanted to help break the color barrier in music videos. The branch Ricky of the music video era. And in Michael Jackson's Jackie Robinson. Walter Yadnikov calls up Bob Pittman. And this is from my book. I interviewed Walter. Yep. Before he unfortunately passed away. He calls up Bob, says, are you the chief schmuck? Pop goes, yes, I want you to play Billie Jean. Not up to you. Let me tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to pull every record video. What are your Artists going to do, they're not going to have to worry about mtv. If I pull everything, Quincy Jones, who's very close to Steve Ross, who owns the other half of mtv, is surely going to pull out. And then you can have Warner and CBS pulling your stuff. Eventually, MTV caves. They put on Billie Jean and it becomes this just like massive video that paves the way for Thriller to become arguably the most influential music video of all time. And really Michael Jackson becoming the biggest star in the world. I think so much of it had to do with having that video aspect, right? Because it wasn't just that he was a great singer or songwriter or had a great producer in Quincy Jones, but obviously he could dance like nobody else. If you don't have the visual element, if you don't have his videos, that's lost in the shuffle. It's not like everybody's gonna be able to go out and see him on tour. And even if he made it to a tour in the 80s, he's sitting way up in the nosebleeds. You can't really see Michael moon walking. And the Jumbotron isn't really what it is these days. Not only did it make the career of Michael Jackson, but it just added this third dimension to all music that sort of hadn't been there before.
- [18:49]
Molly
The other person that came shortly after Michael is Madonna. Because Michael was already a star, this just brought him to this otherworldly stratosphere that we just hadn't seen any solo act go to before. But Madonna was tailor made to succeed on mtv. Everything about her is visual. How people connected with her 1984 VMAs performance, singing like a Virgin. And every other time that she's done where she's reinvented herself, she had different identities. I don't think that is as possible when you're purely existing on radio. He was very successful, not necessarily as successful as Michael, but it argued that relative to her Delta, MTV played an even bigger percentage factor in terms of her career and what she was able to achieve than maybe honestly anyone else I could think of from the 80s.
- [19:41]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point. Another consequence of the video, you know, the MTV era is the stars started to care a lot more about their appearance. And you had the 80s glam rock type of thing going on. Everybody was wearing just tons of makeup. How you looked suddenly was important in a way that it hadn't been before. Back in the day, if you were, let's say, not a traditionally attractive person, it didn't really matter. As a musician because you weren't really like front and center on screen all the time. In the MTV era, that began to change. And an artist like Billy Joel, not like the prettiest dude in the world, that was like a different set of considerations. And I always wonder if that's part of the reason why. Billy Joel essentially retired in 1993. He put out his last album, river of Dreams. He was arguably one of the biggest artists of the 80s and early 90s and all of a sudden just stopped. And he keeps touring and all that, but he was certainly never a glam rock guy. And I'm not sure that he could have pulled it off and he wasn't into it anyway. On the flip side, it increased the objectification of women in music videos, tropes of girls in cages that became an icky consequence of the video age. Superficial element began to take over. There were artists who came on who were good looking and you could produce the video in such a way it sounded good. But they were never actually going to succeed on tour because they couldn't really replicate that in a live setting. And so you had more one hit wonders or like acts that didn't really have legs in the long term as a well rounded live music sensation.
- [21:09]
Molly
Yeah, definitely. The other thing that happened right around this time is on the business side for mtv, they end up getting acquired a deal with Viacom. And this is the same structure that they largely are under today. But in 1984, in that post thriller era, MTV started having a pretty sizable and strong business. $0.5 million in revenue, almost $12 million in profit. Warner Amex had owned 66% of the business and they were reaching 26 million households. And a lot of that was more so, just the continued growth and development of cable. The acquisition also included VH1 and Nickelodeon. And then not even too long after that, they were entertaining offers to go back private again for nearly $500 million. So the 80s was such a growth uptick period. And you started to see that on the recorded side of the business as well. Because the reason that the record labels were pushing and trying to get their videos played is because you were able to see the impact of airtime on mtv and then you see those records getting sold at Tower Records, at Strawberries or wherever people are buying their albums from.
- [22:19]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, everything was in place and they just needed to have content to put into the machine and get people to be engaging with the content. And once that happened, it really was a money making machine. You have free content coming in the cable providers are paying MTV to be in their offering selection. And the only cost really to MTV at that point were just staffing. That was the best business model, right? Free content. Have people pay you to run free content all day long.
- [22:46]
Molly
I want to talk about Yo, MTV Raps, because this is an important show. You mentioned earlier about the lack of black artists being shown on mtv. There's that iconic David Bowie interview where he calls out, hey, why aren't you playing more music from black artists? Hip hop just wasn't necessarily getting its shine. Even after Thriller and the success there. It's like they kept moving the goalpost. But then things change after, um, TV wraps.
- [23:15]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
That might be the most important show in the history of mtv. It may not be the best known, but just in terms of culturally, what it meant in terms of bringing hip hop to the mainstream.
- [23:23]
Molly
There were folks like Ralph McDaniels doing his thing with Video Music Box. But I don't think that a show like that necessarily got the budget or got the level of exposure that UMTV Raps did. It's interesting because that show, because mid-90s when it ended, highlights a bit of this shift that we started to see with mtv because you would have them just show music videos. Then you had programming that was still directed around showing you music videos. But then you really started to see things shift into other types of content. They did get into movies, and I think they also influenced movies, maybe even before they got into movies, because later in the 80s, you started to see the Brat Pack in all of those movies. Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevette and Demi Moore. Movies like Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, Pretty in Pink, all of that. And then you extend to the next decade where you have your scream, and I know you did last summer, and singles, Reality Bites, Cruel Intentions. Some of their scenes feel like music videos in a lot of ways. Then MTV eventually has its own award show. So movie awards start. I think it's 92 was when they had the first show where they have all of these awards that clearly line up with the MTV demographic, like Best Kiss and stuff like that. And you start to see a lot of people play into that. So they were wise about the multimedia expansions and then the business just making complete sense to go into.
- [24:47]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, and I think the other thing was MTV was very smart about maintaining the sort of edgy ethos to it. It was 1988 or 89. The Grammys and snubbed hip hop, per usual. UMTV raps posted a Grammy boycott. Party. Will Smith came In Slick Rick and Ice T, all of a sudden this old guy rolls up on a motorcycle and it's Malcolm Forbes, the owner publisher of Forbes magazine at the time. They emphasized, first of all, how far hip hop had come in terms of being something that MTV actively ignored in this very racist sort of way to being a driving force getting the attention of people like Malcolm Forbes within just five years. It was a really savvy look for them, especially with the rise of the VMAs as this other award ceremony. Edgier than the Grammys, to be like the people's version of the Grammys or something, which were increasingly Buddy Duddy and old white dudes celebrating each other and overlooking what was. What else was happening in the cultures. Yeah, I think stuff like that really paved the way for the VMAs to have a cultural imprint.
- [25:55]
Molly
And with that, I think we should probably just dig into the VMAs a bit more. Starts off with a bang with Madonna in the wedding dress with a virgin. And every year it did become this opportunity for people to level up, pushing the boundaries. And that's something that we continue to see. Do you remember the first time that you, like, sat down and watched a VMAs? Like in the appointment television setting of, okay, this is what I'm doing tonight, we're watching the VMAs.
- [26:22]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
I can't say that I do. It just. It was like Oxygen. It was just there. And you don't remember the first time that you consumed it. But there are a lot of epic moments in the VMAs. We could talk about Kanye and Taylor Swift in 2009, but I think one pretty funny thing was in one of the earlier VMAs, Michael Jackson was getting sick of being called Jacko or the gloved one. He was invited to appear at the VMAs and he said he wouldn't show up unless MTV said that all of their VJs would start referring to him as the King of Pop exclusively. They went along with it. And so the BJ started calling him the King of Pop. And then now he's the King of Pop. There are always these little concessions that get thrown in at awards shows like this. Whatever ceremonial award is being given. It's what was the behind the scenes horse trading that went on to make it happen. There were a lot of pretty creative ones.
- [27:14]
Molly
Right. We even still see this today. Taylor Swift doesn't need to come to the VMAs, but you can clearly read between the lines when they say, okay, we're going to award you video of the year. And she uses that as her opportunity to be on stage and announce that she's going to drop midnights. So it was the perfect moment for her. But she's not going to show up at that award show and leave it up to chance if she's going to win or not. And it's interesting. Like, that's the kind of stuff that could happen at the VMAs that I don't think really happens at the Oscars. But one of the things that I think about as well from a ratings perspective, this show clearly peaked 2010, 2011, whenever like Gaga either showed up in the meat dress or the egg. That's when the ratings were the highest, over 10 million viewers for it. And for a cable show broadcast, that's pretty high, especially in that era, maybe a college football bowl game and a few other things were getting that many ratings for a cable broadcast. But it was doing pretty well then from that perspective, I think back to shows like 1999. This is why the first time that I picked up the difference how the VMAs may vote on things versus how the Grammys may vote on things, it was a big year for Backstreet Boys, Limp Bizkit, Brittany and all those kinds of bands. But when it came to the Grammys, it was Santana and Rob Thomas Supernatural album, and that album just taken over and sweeping the Grammys. And that's when you realize that, oh yeah, the Grammys, that's more about the Clive Davis group and the VMAs is more about the Carson Daly group. And that was probably the youngest that I realized. I was like, okay, these are two very different things.
- [28:49]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, definitely. And I think VMAs have been kinder to hip hop over the years than the Grammys have, which isn't really saying much. But I think that's also a dividing line. When you think about where MTV was even in the late 80s with the on TV raps and the Grammy boycott party and all that stuff versus like the Grammys still having this big problem acknowledging hip hop. That has only started to get better in the past couple years.
- [29:14]
Molly
When I was in like middle school, high school era, there was much more water cooler talk about the VMAs than there ever were the Grammys, maybe the year that J. Lo wore the green dress, the Grammys got a lot more discussion. But things flip now. I talked to my cousins who were teenagers who love music and there's much more intrigue and Grammys and those things than there ever are VMAs.
- [29:38]
Dan Runcy
Let's take a break for our chart metric Stat of the week Spotify Wrapped 2025 is here. There's been a bunch of discussion about the top artists, songs and albums of the year as well as Spotify's Listening Age stat. Mine is 60 for those who are interested, but what caught my eye was the top audiobooks on Spotify, specifically in the U.S. the top 10 list includes a bunch of titles from the past few years, but one title from 1954 was in the number five spot, and that's J.R.R. tolkien's the Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now the book has been popular for years. The movies were even more popular, but number five on a year end list. I wasn't expecting that, so I did some digging and in 2021 there was a very popular audiobook version that was narrated by Andy Serkis. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit movies was the voice actor behind the infamous ring loving creature Gollum AKA Smeagol. Andy Serkis brings that same energy that he brought into that character into the audiobook and clearly brought new life into it for a generation of fans, both young and old. We talk so much on this show about buying back catalog, buying the rights for IP and bringing that to new life for new generations in music and film. So it's kind of cool to see it happening with audiobooks as well.
- [31:06]
This episode of trapital is brought to you by Beatbread, which helps you make smarter funding decisions, compare your choices and connect with multiple funding platforms. You'll receive higher offers from leading distributors through Beatbread's funding network. You can customize your deal terms and structure by choosing the best recruitment rate, deal length, work to be included, and if you'd like to have an advance against your new music, their tools help you avoid the pitfalls and understanding of the long run trade offs of any given deal from Beatbread or any other source. If you're not comparing your options, you can't make the best decisions, understand your options and get even more choices with Beatbread. Go to beatbread.com or visit the link in our show notes to learn more.
- [31:55]
Molly
But moving on to some of the other program because I know we want to hit a few of these, I think it's probably a good time to talk about reality TV overall because now, at least in this part of the story, we're into the 90s and 1992 is when the real world starts. The day they put on that pilot episode for the Real World, they said the ratings went up 3x compared to what they were showing else before that. And that first season of the Real World was so iconic, it was like good time capsule for grunge culture and was able to show you things uncut in a way that whether it's Singles or reality bites or 90210 or any of these shows that were captured around that area didn't quite get in that same kind of way. And things took off and you just started to see the programming shift more and more to that. And one of the things that I thought a lot about with how this change gradually started to happen over time is I think in entertainment and content overall, there is a bit of this disconnect between what consumers say they want versus how consumers actually behave. And consumers say they want more music videos. Fans, other people say they want more music videos and want MTV to play more music videos. But when you give them that, they don't watch it as much as they watch the stuff that they might complain about, which is the reality shows and all of the different derivatives of the dating shows and Real World rules, challenges and eventually Jersey Shore, which ends up being the biggest show that MTV ever had from that perspective. So the ratings are telling you one thing, but the consumers say this. And it reminds me of this place that Hollywood has been in for the past 20 plus years where people complain about why doesn't Hollywood make more original content. Remember when we were growing up, you had Armageddon and all of these other blockbusters that were original IP in the 90s, but when they take risks that make stuff like that, people don't show up. They show up for IP that's there in a way that if you remove the IP and kept the story, then you lose a large percentage of the audience.
- [33:55]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, no, I think that's a great way of putting it. And you could argue that it's the same in journalism too, right? Everybody says I hate clickbait and let's have more intelligent I hate hot takes. But that's what people click on. It's not just clickbait because people know that's what it is, but they still click on it. People still click on hot takes. And I think the news business has moved more toward lists. Certainly I've been there at putting out lists of the top running rappers or whatever it is. I would much rather do an in depth profile of then tell you how much money he's making. But. But you want to know how much money he's making more than you want an in depth profile. Not you, Dad. I think you would want the in depth.
- [34:32]
Molly
We're fellow nerds.
- [34:33]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
That's why we're doing, you know, maybe.
- [34:34]
Molly
And I think they leaned into like other areas that were tangential to this, that prove their cultural influence too. I remember growing up seeing MTV spring break younger than I ever could have when I ever even go on spring break. And I think even things like that, even though we weren't watching MTV in college, it still influenced. Oh yeah, let's go to Cancun. Why? Because you still think about MTV 1997, them going to Cancun or wherever they had went to, like, things like that just stayed ingrained with you. And then MTV also dabbled into animated stuff. Whether it was Beavis and Butthead and Daria. That's another thing where I think those shows, I don't think they cost that much to make, but they were able to capture a zeitgeist and they were willing to create things that attracted teens. And if it weren't for those shows. And then we then see Adult Swim and all of these other channels that came after with all of these more adult leading cartoons. Granted, I know you had the Simpsons, but I think that still didn't quite hit that like teenage angsty level that I think like Beavis and Butthead or Daria did. And then you also had MTV leading into politics and things like that. Whether it was Rock the Vote or Vote or Die. They helped with the super bowl programming. Obviously. I know this is Roc Nation's lane now, but several decades ago used to be mtv. Remember that one that had the matchup of Nelly and Aerosmith and Mary J. Blige and NSync? That was the MTV production. So they had their hands in all of these types of things. I feel like the last moment they had that before it really became just reality. And then gearing up for awards shows was that late 90s 90s, early 2000s, like TRL era. Were you a big TRL watcher again?
- [36:14]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
It was more of like a thing that I would watch at other kids houses. The TRL era also overlapped with file sharing. It was something that I was interested in early on and I guess we all were. Right, but we all did that. That was a lot more. You could have a. But yeah, no, TRL is one thing. If you really wanted to listen to whatever weird music I was listening to at the time. What was the first time you saw TRL?
- [36:34]
Molly
Yeah, I probably started watching either 98 or 99 I think it debuted in 98 because it was like Backstreet Boys in a corn. They were some of the popular videos around that. By the end of 1998, you had Britney's debut. That was a huge moment. And then in the same way that we were talking about Madonna as being probably the biggest artist who. I'm not sure where their career would have been without MTV. I think Britney may have been that for the 2000s, where TRL really became her vehicle. I think the boy bands and that whole bubblegum pop era was as well. But I think especially her, just given the heights that he was able to reach. And then a couple years later, we saw it with Eminem too, because he's someone that if there wasn't MTV and you're just relying on program directors at radio stations to go promote this person's music, and you're hoping that Dr. Dre's cosign is enough for that, would Eminem have broken out the same way that he was able to? Eminem really became the biggest selling artist of the 2000s. He had songs talking about, if I was black, I wouldn't have as many followers. And I go on trl, look how many bugs I get. Those two probably benefited most from the TRL machine.
- [37:47]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, that's a great point. And as far as who benefited the most from MTV over its history, I'd probably still go back to mj. But really, I think that there was a direct benefit for him. Kanye was pretty epic when it came to his video output. See, you could really put any big video artist as a primary beneficiary of 2D.
- [38:06]
Molly
I think we haven't even mentioned Hype Williams yet. But I think everything that he did with music videos, the artists that he was working with, Missy, Timbaland, all of those, MTV just enabled this. And going back to the movie tie in the movie Belly, which was pretty much an hour and a half, music video is stemming from what you were able to do with that and with music videos as well. Even though reality TV was taken off, music videos were having just this big moment. Especially in the TRL era, it wasn't uncommon for a superstar artist to have a music video with a $2 million budget. You alluded to it earlier with Napster and decline of the CD era. But MTV was able to withstand some of this because of the reality tv people were still tuning in. So there was this lag where obviously MTV's decline was coming. But it didn't decline as quickly as the music industry did because MTV had content in the programming that was there that wasn't reliant on music industry sales. I know that's a common thing that people get frustrated about where companies will leverage music to grow. And then once they become sustainable and the music industry is still trying to find its way, those companies grow, go on to do big things. I think that's a common thing we've heard in tech over the past 15 years or so. But I do think that definitely lined up with some of the MTV criticism as well.
- [39:28]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah. And I would add the rise of product placement in music videos as another thing that kind of degraded the product. And as the MTV promotion machine wound down, it wasn't so clear that music videos were going to be these great drivers of sales for albums and albums that were going down. So that was kind of another problem. But then you still had this assumption that if you were a big artist, you're going to have a big video. It was prestige thing. And so in order to make the videos work, you had to have these really egregious product placements in the middle of your videos. And then it began to move a little bit back toward that same like corny promotional thing that videos has started out as. And I think that further reduced the emphasis on music videos more broadly. So this kind of vicious cycle began to come into effect. I guess though, to tie it back to hip hop with beats. Jimmy Iovine made this edict that every video had to have beats in it that was coming out. So there's your product placement. But it got pretty corny and I think really contributed to the demise of the music videos in art forum.
- [40:27]
Molly
So with that we could fast Forward ridiculousness on MTV 20 hours a day.
- [40:32]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Oh God, yeah.
- [40:33]
Molly
How did we get here?
- [40:34]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah. If you follow that business model to its logical end. Right. It's race to the bottom. You know what's cheaper than reality tv? Yeah. Clip shows just have some dopey clip show and run it over and over again. The vast majority of their MTV programming, I guess enough people watch it and it's cheap enough to produce. That's not a long term plan. If you want to look at blooper reels, you can always just go online. Right. It's the same thing as music videos. If MTV doesn't find some other path at the end will be coming. The brand means something, but who knows what it means anymore? And the core business is gone. I don't know. People still have dial up Internet. How long are the last few holdouts going to stay that you could eke out A profit running a business like that. And they just, I don't think ever really figured out what to do. Once you could find music, music videos everywhere on the Internet, I think they missed their chance to start a social network or have MTV compete with YouTube. By YouTube. If they could have found a way that you can go to mtv.com and watch videos and that would have. If that would have become like the milieu through which people watch videos online, then that would have been a great business. But they didn't do it. And now they're just this race to the bottom.
- [41:41]
Molly
So Google buys YouTube 2006 for a billion dollars. Could Viacom have done.
- [41:48]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, it's probably out of MTV's price range by then. But could they have bought YouTube earlier on? Could they have started a competitor to YouTube? Could they have. You gotta think also they had such a start where there were takedown notices. It took a while before the music industry could get on board with YouTube and figure out what's a fair. MTV had these great relationships, the labels. Don't you think they could have preempted YouTube in many ways? I think that would have been a logical path. They just never really did it. If Netflix could pivot from physical DVDs being sent to your house to streaming, why couldn't MTV pivot more toward doing something online? But I think it was probably one of those situations where, like, we don't want to cannibalize. We put it on online, nobody's watched a TV channel, and then they just watch the opportunity go to others. There's still a path for nostalgia, right? We're doing an MTV episode right now. And so I guess, like, the brand of MTV is still valuable to generation nostalgia stuff. But it's rough. It's a rough moment.
- [42:45]
Molly
Netflix's pivot, I think, is a good example. Granted, I do think that they probably had the flexibility because they were a independent company. I know they tried to get bought by Blockbuster. Blockbuster wasn't interested. But they were an independent company. And the fact that MTV was under Viacom, they were already within the cable network complex where this is the business we're in. And we're going to run this cash cow as long as we can. And that's just what the higher ups do. And that's the same thing that we've seen and we've talked about in some of the record label conversations we've had. What makes a cash money different from a Def Jam. And you think about some of the decisions that a company like Def Jam has. Great brand. But the minute that you're wholly owned or majority owned by the broader powers that be, you do become engulfed in that and it's harder to make those distinct differences. And I feel like that's what we're seeing here a bit now with mtv. Do you have a dark horse move, something that MTV did that doesn't get talked about enough today?
- [43:49]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
How about this, my dark horse? How about DJ Pauly D? The music network puts out a reality show and this guy becomes a DJ, right? I remember DJ Pauly D1 year when I was doing my list of top earning DJs for Forbes. He made something like 10 million bucks and a lot of it was from Jersey Shore, but a lot of it was also from him going out and getting paid like 50 grand a show in Vegas or wherever. 50 grand a show. That's like what Questball was getting at the time. And so in a funny way, MTV did create a music star, even way after its heyday of elevating music stars. That there was DJ Pauly Lee kind of doing his thing. And I think out of all of them he has the most sustainable career. I don't know that any of them could go out and get that much money just for an appearance. And. And he's certainly been able to do that pretty nicely.
- [44:38]
Molly
Jersey Shore was brilliant. There's no other way to say it. Even though it was technically after MTV's heyday, it was the highest rated show that they've ever had and it really wasn't even that close. It's pretty impressive. My dark horse move is how they positioned everything with VJs. Now you see Barstool Ringer, other places that really put effort into making its media personalities become stars. People remember what it was like with Carson Daly or Nanda Lewis or Dave Holmes who mentioned Pauly D, even though he wasn't a traditional vj. Someone having the platform from MTV being able to go in, do their own thing.
- [45:17]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, I'm surprised too that there were more washed up musicians who didn't have anything better to do, but who were still big names coming back and being VJs and maybe they thought it was beneath them or something. I think that would have been an interesting way of integrating music into more directly. But probably they would have wanted way more money than whatever anonymous VJ came and then that they made a start. I guess we saw this with ESPN a little bit too. If you're the right kind of place, you can hire somebody for pretty cheap and then make them into a star. And Then eventually they become too expensive for you and they go do their own thing. And then you could just keep creating stars. And that's probably a better business model than luring some name to attach to your shows.
- [45:53]
Molly
It's a good point because Bow wow on was 106 and Park. And he also was someone who benefited from having his music videos on 106 and park several years earlier. But you didn't see as much of this on mtv, especially all the one hit wonders that MTV had birthed in places like that. Like having those people come in, they. They would have been more affordable and they clearly saw the impact of the platform. Who do you think won the most from mtv?
- [46:18]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
I was going to say Michael Jackson, and I think that's a fair way of putting it. However, I'm going to go with the hot take, Taylor Swift. I'm going to say that Taylor Swift from that moment at the VMAs and I actually did a thing on this before. If you chart her annual earnings from that moment in 2009 through today, it's just like a rocket ship taking off. Would Taylor Swift have become Taylor Swift even if she had been interrupted by Kanye to be amazed? I'm sure she would have. But we could do a whole episode on that, right on what it means. Obviously Kanye shouldn't have done it, but the backlash was really disproportionate and I think deeply racist. But the fact is that Taylor Swift emerged from this such a wave of goodwill, like poor Taylor Swift. This terrible thing happened to her and I think made her so appealing a mainstream superstar in a way that she wasn't at the time. Kanye west was a much bigger star than Taylor was at the time. And I think that it elevated her on the national international stage. Even though the episode was not fun for her. I'm sure it was sympathy and positive feelings that really helped Kacen her rise to superstardom. So I'm gonna go with Taylor Swift. How about that?
- [47:26]
Molly
It's a hot take and I agree with you that I think she still would have been a star without it. So mine is another hot take and that's Rob Dyrdek. This man has dominated this network for almost two decades. Robin Biggs starts in 2006. They have their run, they do their thing, and then after that you have Rob Dyrdek's fantasy factory. But around this time he starts to be a producer and a co creator of these shows. So he's now getting equity stakes in these shows and points on everything. And he also has a stake in ridiculousness to the show that is responsible for 60% of MTV itself. And he has spun it up into having these different ventures where he's selling this and that. And the same way that a content creator has been doing their things directly off of YouTube and hoping for the brand placements and all of that money, Rob's been doing this on mtv, so he's getting the MTV money. And he's also still doing his own product placements through all of these shows because he wrote it into his contract that way. So despite the decline that MTV has largely had in the Rob Dyrdek era, this man has cleaned up that cash cow and is still continuing to do.
- [48:39]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
I think that's a great one, because I don't see him being as successful as he was otherwise. It's not like Taylor Swift, where. I think it was going to happen anyway. So that's. I think that's a great take.
- [48:49]
Molly
Yeah.
- [48:50]
Dan Runcy
All right.
- [48:50]
Molly
Who do you think lost the most, if that is. I know that's a bit of a weird frame, but. Yeah. Do you think anyone lost?
- [48:55]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah. Keeping with my Kanye and Taylor thing, I'm going to go with Kanye. How about that? And it's on the one hand, Kanye did go on to be a billionaire after that, so it pokes a hole in my argument. But then he also became not a billionaire. I really do think that whole episode and just the magnitude of the backlash, I think it totally changed him, and I think that it made him, like, paranoid and. And like this fundamentally, I don't know, negative in his outlook at the world and what might happen. He was basically exiled for a couple of years. He did come back from that to create My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I think is the best album of this millennium. It fundamentally altered his world outlook in a way that. That contributed to his downfall. Obviously, there's a lot of other stuff involved in that and mental health issues and certainly his own demons. And look, if you're putting out anti Semitic statements, if you're trashing any group of people, whether you're dealing with mental health issues or not, that's just, like, absolutely unacceptable. There are a lot of other factors at play, but I do think that it shook him to his core in a way, continued reverberating long beyond that. That 2009 VMA moment.
- [50:04]
Molly
I get it. I think that his mother passing and then this VMA's happening, I think maybe two years after or something like that. Those are probably the two biggest categories.
- [50:14]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yes.
- [50:15]
Molly
Yeah. Oh, shit. What's going to happen he had success after that, plenty of commercial success, plenty of household hits, but wasn't necessarily the old Kanye ever again.
- [50:24]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, I think old Kanye died at the VMAs, right. I think it definitely took him in a different direction.
- [50:29]
Molly
For better or worse, mine is a vague who lost the most, but artists that were either a not visually appealing in their appearance, their vibe, or artists that just didn't play the game. I think there were a lot of artists who were quite talented in the 90s, but just didn't lean into the whole TRL thing. Sheryl Crow, for instance, she has that All I Want to do song. She had a few hits in the 90s, but I don't think she ever really hit that MTV. And this was around the time when you saw the country pop crossovers and stuff, but I don't think she was ever really willing to do that. So I feel got a bit lost in the mix.
- [51:05]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Yeah, it's a good point about artists maybe like Billy Joel who didn't have the look, or Bob Dylan who didn't care. They didn't continue to have the sort of commercial success that like the Rolling Stones did. Mick Jagger was happy to go on and do all this stuff, and obviously Bob Dylan and Billy Joel still sell records and contour and sell out at arena, but they're nowhere as financially successful as the Stones are anymore and haven't been for decades.
- [51:26]
Molly
Anything else at MTV before we close this out?
- [51:29]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
I think that's all I had. Yeah, that was really fun, Molly. I think we covered it all.
- [51:33]
Molly
I think we covered all right. All right, thanks again, man.
- [51:36]
Dan Runcy
Appreciate it.
- [51:37]
Zach O'Malley Greenberg
Thanks for having me, dad.
- [51:40]
Dan Runcy
And that is a wrap for our breakdown on mtv. I hope you enjoyed it, especially if you didn't catch it the first time around. Thank you again to Zach o' Malley Greenberg for joining me to share your insights. Thank you again to G and Eric, our audio and video producers, for everything that you do to help make this show possible. And thank you for listening. If there's one person you know that would really enjoy Traffital, whether it's this MTV breakdown or any of the episodes that we have, send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow. If you haven't already been following the show, then please tap the Follow button, tap that Start button on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast. If you have a few minutes, leave a review, leave a comment that helps the algorithm do its thing and make sure that trapital reaches the right people. Thanks again. Talk to you next time.