The Converging of Cultures: MTV & YouTube (Part 1)

Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor

Introduction

Did the MTV, the earliest purveyor and capitalist of popular culture, foretell future of the music video through a ‘mediamorphosis’ that converged the commercial culture that we had all come to know with the participatory interaction that the Internet embraced?  If so, did it in turn cause its own demise by continuously sending its users to the online venue that would later force it to commit ‘mediacide?’  We may never know.  Nevertheless, its transition from Music Television that played popular videos to Reality Television that plays licensed thirty-second clips of music during The Hills happened.

Media Convergence

Convergence Culture, mapped out by author and MIT Professor Henry Jenkins, is a new territory, “where old and new media intersect, where grassroots and corporate media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of the consumer interact in unpredictable ways.”  ‘Total Request Live’, formally MTV’s most popular television show, built an empire through embracing both participatory and commercial culture.  They deepened their audience’s emotional investment with the commercial brand by letting them vote for which videos they wanted played. 

The roots of TRL trace back to 1997 when MTV aired a countdown show simply called Total Request.  Its first incarnation was far more subdued version where Carson Daly introduced music videos from an empty, dimly lit set.  The shows live aspect came in the fall of 1998 when MTV producers decided to merge the real-time aspect of MTV Live and the fan-controlled countdown power of Total Request.  Carson’s presence brought popularity to the show and helped it gain the momentum that got it added to the list of daytime programming.

Throughout its first year on the air, the show had spent its time developing a cult-type following. Its signature location, the crowded streets of Times Square in New York City, created a popular culture fandom that was unheard of until the series.  If Carson or a guest waved at the window, there were always fans standing outside waving signs and going hysterical.  Rain, shine, or Hell freezing over, weather didn’t matter much to the audience.  ‘They’ showed up regardless.

TRL embodied a thriving convergence culture with its intersection of old and new media. “On one hand,” Jenkins weighs, “convergence represents an expanded opportunity for media conglomerates, since content that succeeds in one sector can spread across platforms.”  The TRL countdown integrated votes, popular charts, ringtones, download, radio-airplay, and streams, which meant that the most user-requested video might not have been the number one spot.  “On the other hand,” Jenkins counters, “convergence represents a risk since most of these media fear a fragmentation and erosion of their markets.” 

During the rise of this flagship television series, it formed a center stage in Middle America’s living room, and launched artist’s careers into stardom.  However, in order to do that, they were encouraging users to go online to add the interactive illusion to the shows premise, which as noted may not have necessarily led to the desired outcome intended by its audience.  With that challenging aspect in mind, Jenkins forewarns media conglomerates, “Each time they move a viewer from the television to the Internet, say, there is a risk that [they] may not return.”

‘They’ would go onto be referred to as The MTV Generation, whose early psychosocial exposure to popular culture and mass media profoundly characterized their deep appreciation of the fashion trends, perspective, attitude, and the music that MTV popularized.  This resulted in a peculiar, homogenous youth culture within a generation that was the last to grow up with such semi-obsolete items of the pre-digital era as VHS tapes, audio cassettes and vinyl records, and the first to grow up with personal computers in the home.

Read Part Two & Three