![]() “I would cover the Grammys, and I would go on the red carpet with Snooki,” said former MTV News senior writer and editor Gil Kaufman. Over time, MTV became known for Pauly Shore and then “Jersey Shore” as much as it used to be known for Michael Jackson and then Janet Jackson. “When the video hours started getting cut, when you couldn’t just turn on your television and catch a half-hour of music videos, that was when it started.” “The philosophical struggle didn’t really start to show up until the number of music-video hours were being drastically cut,” said Alex of the mid-’90s shift. How ‘The Real World: New York’ found its Season 1 cast - and its successĪnd since MTV was all about change from the very beginning, there wasn’t stiff resistance internally to the initial influx of non-music programming. But there were plenty of other people who said, ‘Well look, kids are intrigued by these people.’ But my disliking it or not being interested in it wasn’t about my thinking, ‘This isn’t music - it doesn’t belong on MTV.’ ” “I was one of those who was not particularly interested in ‘The Real World.’ That was not my bag,” he said of the groundbreaking series, which was inspired by PBS’s “An American Family.” “And I was not the only person who thought that. ©MCA/Courtesy Everett Collectioīut when “The Real World” came along, Alex admits that it wasn’t exactly considered “cool” by him and others at MTV. To be in the halls of MTV and say, ‘Listen, I’ve got some great, cool new idea that kids will love,’ no one’s gonna say, ‘Well, is it about music?’ ” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video premiered on MTV on Dec. ![]() They were completely not like anything else out there. They felt like they belonged in the space. “Early on, those non-music-video shows were sort of inspired by the culture. They were these great accent points,” said Alex, who, from 1989 to 2007, was a producer on everything from “The Week in Rock” to “House of Style” before heading up the MTV News digital side. “They felt like they were the exception to the rule. Then there came longer-form specialty music programming such as “Headbangers Ball,” “Yo! MTV Raps” and the alt-rock arbiter “120 Minutes.” And early non-music programs, including the Cindy Crawford-hosted “House of Style,” the game show “Remote Control” and the animated series “Liquid Television” - which spawned “Beavis and Butt-head” - were outliers in an all-video-all-the-time world. ![]() It was total MTV ‘Road Rules’ craziness.” I drove with a very beautiful model in a Ford Thunderbird and a big RV traveling behind us. “It was a trip across the country for 30 days doing sort of man-on-the-street comedy, so that was kind of the first of its kind. “I did this thing called ‘Amuck in America,’ ” said Hunter, who was the last of the original VJs to leave, in 1987. Madonna performed “Like a Virgin” at the 1984 Video Music Awards. Many single out “The Real World” - which premiered in 1992 and is largely credited (and sometimes blamed) for jump-starting the reality-television boom - for turning MTV into the “Teen Mom” and “Ridiculousness” universe that it is today. But, he added, nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills: “There’s the cultural loss versus MTV was an ongoing business trying to survive. “The MTV that people remember from the 1980s was a wonderful thing,” said former MTV producer Michael Alex. Jackson, Martha Quinn and Alan Hunter were the original MTV VJs. MTV began to train their cameras on the lifestyle of the young folks that were watching MTV.” Nina Blackwood (clockwise from left), Mark Goodman, J.J. That was when MTV decided that they couldn’t just be a video jukebox forever. “And that was kind of the beginning of different kinds of shows that you would see. “I was the VJ that loved being out of the studio the most, so I was the one they sent to spring break to be a part of the thousands of screaming young guys cracking beers over my head,” Hunter, 64, told The Post. 1, 1981, Alan Hunter helped put the video-bingeing network on the music map.īut when he trekked down to Daytona Beach, Fla., to cover “the chaos that was spring break” for the first time in 1986, little did he know that it was the beginning of the end for the M - music - in MTV. Here’s the epic power ballad that embodies your zodiac signĪs one of the five original VJs who launched MTV into the Moonman stratosphere 40 years ago, on Aug. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs earns MTV’s Global Icon Award at the 2023 VMAsĬhristina Aguilera demanded MTV re-edit ’03 VMA’s to include Madonna smooch: former exec Nicki Minaj to host 2023 VMAs in comeback bid amid ongoing career drama
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