R.I.P. TRL
Alright, we lied. The news below capped off yesterday’s celebrations.
After nearly 10 years, MTV has decided to pull the plug on Total Request Live. While very much a staple in afternoon television itineraries throughout the late 1990s, a combination of dwindling ratings and the network’s lack of anything else music over the last few years was the likely result of its ultimate demise.
Well, at least that’s our guess. TRL executive producer Dave Sirulnick says differently.
“We want to close this era of `TRL’ in a big celebratory way, and 10 is a great number,” Sirulnick said. “And 10 is the number that `TRL’ counted down every single day for 10 years, and we hit this 10th (anniversary) and we thought, `You know what? This feels like the right time and let’s celebrate it and let’s reward it. And let’s let it have a little bit of a rest for a minute.’ Let it catch its breath! Been working hard — for 10 years!”
Though no official end dates has been announced, Sirulnick went on to note the time to stock up on kleenexes will be sometime in Novemeber.
Kidding aside, I doubt few if any will be choked up over the news. After all, does anyone even associate the word “music” with MTV anymore? Even in TRL’s heyday, when the network was the “go to” for all things music, one could argue that its emphasis on teenie-bop and boy bands brainwashed a majority of the country’s music audience from realizing the true talents of the era’s best bands. If anything, the end of TRL and the dwindling of Top 40 radio stations will allow the current generation of youngster’s to become more aware of some of the industry’s more quality music at a much younger age.
TRL brought an end to MTV’s legitimacy. Unfortuantly for MTV, this decision came 10 years too late.
Oh, the internet is such a glorious age!
Sep 30th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
[...] music and music videos (R.I.P. MTV) are accessible beyond belief, but seeing as how this particular article pertains to the former [...]
Sep 17th, 2008 at 9:15 am
[...] No Rock and Rull Fun has its own conclusions pertaining to the creative struggle. We’ll stay out of the guessing games for now, but at least there is now, maybe, possible an explanation as to why Eminem failed to show at Nelson’s B-Day earlier this summer? Either that, or he’s just too choked up over the news of TRL’s demise. [...]