More than a year after his first term, President Bill Clinton made good on his promise to return to MTV if young voters send him to the White House. The 1994 town hall-style show was intended to focus on violence in America, but that was a question of personal preference that Make the title and helped put MTV News on the media map.
Shorts or shorts?
“Often summaries,” Mr. Clinton replied to a room full of giggles.
Now, a generation after MTV News bridged the gap between news and pop culture, Paramount, the network’s parent company, announced this week that it is shutting down the news service.
Chris McCarthy, president and chief executive officer of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, said the termination of MTV’s news business is part of Paramount’s plan to cut 25% of its staff.
MTV News and its team of broadcasters and video journalists are the ones who tell young people about Kurt Cobain commits suicide of Nirvana, and the infamous murders of BIG and Tupac Shakur. They transport viewers to the presidential campaign and face-to-face with world leaders like Yasir Arafat, and put them on a college dorm in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They also embraced the celebrity mess of the 1990s and early 2000s, like when Courtney Love interrupt an interview with Madonna. They always put music first.
Through it all, MTV News never strayed from its core mission of focusing on conversation around young people.
“There’s no comparison, it’s one of them,” said SuChin Pak, a former reporter for MTV News. “We are kids jostling each other. There’s nothing out there for young people.”
Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, said MTV News disrupted the TV news environment “in terms of young versus old, stylish versus normal” rather than approach conservative versus liberal approach of many cable news networks today. . Its influence can be seen in the work of Vice News, the brutal digital media disruptor. is preparing to file for bankruptcy, and in the style of hand-held camcorder reporting that some CNN journalists have adopted.
He said MTV was able to attract a young audience who could name the entire Flock of Seagulls catalog but was also curious about current events.
Mr. Thompson said: The Music Television Network launched in 1981 as “a spark that ignited the cable television revolution”. Six years later, MTV News is airing under the deep, steady voice of Kurt Loder, a former Rolling Stone editor and co-host of the weekly news program “The Week in Rock.” But it was the announcement of his regular show interruption about Cobain’s death in 1994 that cemented Mr. Loder as “Gen X’s laureate poet,” Mr. Thompson said.
“I think it’s the best live broadcast for a terrible event,” said Loder, who currently reviews the film for Reason magazine, in an interview.
Mr. Loder said MTV News has tried to differentiate itself from other cable news operations in a number of ways.
For starters, its hosts and reporters don’t wear vests. They are also not “self-righteous” and try to “not belittle the audience,” he said. That becomes especially important as rap and hip-hop seep into every fiber of American culture.
“We didn’t jump into rap at all because we saw it as a threat to the republic; Mr. Loder said. MTV then began adding hip-hop to its music program “and suddenly had a whole new audience.”
Sway Calloway was included in MTV News to “raise the conversation” around hip-hop and pop culture, while doing so with credence.
He said: “MTV News takes news very seriously. “We all want to make sure we maintain integrity in what we do.”
Mr. Calloway, who currently hosts the morning radio show on SiriusXM, said he knew his respect for hip-hop culture had reached new heights as he sat in the Blue Room of the White House with President Barack Obama.
“When Biggie said, ‘Did you ever think hip-hop would go this far?’ I never thought that culture would suit the most powerful man in the free world, that we would be able to discuss through hip-hop culture that resonates across the globe.” Mr. Calloway said. “It’s because of MTV News.”
Since its inception, MTV News has positioned itself as an important connector for young voters. Tabitha Soren, a reporter for MTV News in the 1990s, witnessed it first-hand on the campaign trail with MTV’s “Choose or Lose” voting campaign, and in the White House.
“People very seriously and sincerely want young people to be educated voters, not arbitrarily put anyone in the ballot box,” she said. “I feel like we’re trying to make sure they’ve been informed.”
For Soren, 23 when she first appeared on MTV News in 1991, being able to connect with younger audiences became easier because she was their age, she said. That meant asking Arafat about the role of young people in the intifada and coming to Bosnia to follow in the footsteps of the American military, many of whom were the same age as MTV’s audience.
Ms Soren, now a visual artist in the Bay Area, said: “I sympathize because I am their age. “My natural curiosity most of the time matches what the audience wants to hear.”
That’s especially true for Ms. Pak, who was born in Korea and filmed a documentary for MTV News about growing up in the US with immigrant parents.
“For me personally, it was a cultural shift, but to an audience that was suddenly like, wait, we’re going to talk about this version of what it means to be American. shown and never talked about, and do it in the most realistic way possible?” Ms. Pak, who has worked for MTV for a decade said currently co-hosting a podcast. “Where would you see that other than MTV?”
Just as Mr. Loder and Ms. Soren have become cultural standards for Generation X, Mrs. Pak, Mr. Calloway and others have taken on that role for millennia. Rushing home after school to watch Total Request Live, they watch video journalists cover the day’s headlines at 10 minutes to one o’clock during network afternoons and between Britney Spears and Green Day videos.
“A lot of people have received the news from us, we understand and know it,” Ms. Pak said. “For all of us, it was, OK, what’s the audience, what’s our way here to feel authentic? You do it by sitting down with them instead of standing over them.”
