MTV

Medialoper Bebop Episode 13: Phony Clashmania

August 4, 2011 by Jim Connelly

MTV turned 30 this week, and Jim, Tim & Kirk discuss its influence and the time that Kirk said “I Want My MTV” for a cable tv contest. (03:45 – 15:25)

Then, it’s a Musical Moment to Die For with “Duel” by Swervedriver (15:30 – 17:33)

Game of Thrones is totally blowing up right now, so we get into a spoiler-free discussion about how we all got into it and why we like it. (17:35 – 29:10)

Medialoper Bebop has a sponsor now: DuroSport Electronics. We’re not happy about it at all. (29:30 – 31:50)

After that, we look at why the London Tourism Bureau is using “London Calling” to try and bring people to London for the 2012 Olympics. (29:35 – 37:16)

Finally, Tim shares the music in his mix: Portugal.The Man; Arctic Monkeys; Fountains of Wayne. And tosses in an extra plug for the new Jane’s Addiction song. (37:18 – 41:05)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:47 — 69.8MB)

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MTV Looks Better Than You Did At 25

August 1, 2006 by Jim Connelly

MTV turns 25 today, and love it or hate it, it’s hard to imagine a pop culture landscape without it. Like the iPod, it took an that took an existing type of musical content — music videos had been around for decades — and turned it into a disruptive force.

And then abandoned it almost immediately. If they first made their name by the novelty of the music video, they kept their name by slowly turning their focus away from those videos. (Variations of the “MTV doesn’t play videos anymore” jokes started almost immediately and have aged worse than the channel itself.) Even though I have pretty much stopped watching MTV, I have always admired how they’ve managed to stay relevant. And I think that the they fact that they made it part of their programming philosophy to continually change in the same way that pop culture continually changes is how they’ve done it.

The Viral Death Spiral

March 27, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

Are we already seeing the death of the viral video? I think we can all agree that the viral nature of viral comes from the fact that its spreads by word-of-mouth (mouth = email or cell phone). That major media companies are now packaging online clips as “viral” suggests that they don’t really get it.

VH1 has Web Junk 20 with the companion site VSPOT (and, yes, I’m amused to see that the New York Times article specifically notes that these so-called “viral” web moments are released to the VH1 website after they’re aired on the show). Bravo has its series Outrageous and Contagious: Viral Videos. USA Networks is reportedly working on a project as well. Already it’s enough, right?

Can you say Carson Daly? I thought you could. And despite the fact that jumping the shark has jumped the shark, the major media viral video craze has jumped the shark when a show called (wait for it) The Net with Carson Daly is poised for debut. What, blogging wasn’t good enough for him?