In December 1989 (MTV) marked the close of the decade with a series of special programs. Decade presented two hours of news clips and soundbites, edited to the ever-present beat of a rock and roll sound track. The Top 100 Video Countdown reprised the decade's most popular videos, from Madonna's "Material Girl" to Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Perhaps most intriguing was Rate the Eighties, a viewer participation program. Using a 900-number polling survey (another innovation of the decade), MTV's audience picked what their parents might have called "faves" and "pet peeves." The two-hour special culminated in the selection of the most appropriate slogan for the eighties. The list included, among others, singer Bobby McFerrin's cheerful anthem "Don't Worry - Be Happy" and “You look marvelous." But the hands-down winner, garnering 38 percent of audience votes, was less optimistic. The motto of the decade for MTV's acolytes? "Life sucks, and then you die."
From modest beginnings as "rock radio with pictures," MTV today is a full-service channel, with comedy, drama, quiz programs, even news targeted for its legions of loyalists, mostly teenagers. Over 20 million American households tune in each week; between 500,000 and 1.5 million at any one time. The channel is beamed by satellite into nearly thirty countries. A second service VH-1 (targeted to the so-called baby-boom generation of twenty-five to forty-nine year olds), is now available. A viewer magazine and soap opera are in development. Even an MTV theme park (working title: "Rockplexx") is on the drawing board.
Just as the Disney empire has carefully crafted and scrupulously preserved a narrow and predictable worldview, MTV has created its own culture and aesthetic. But where Disney has been accused of promulgating myths of innocence, cultivating consumerism, and facilitating a benign sexism (women are "Cinderella" or "The Little Mermaid"), the lessons of MTV are more rooted in the dark side of human experience. A decade of research by social scientist, mainly psychologists and anthropologists, has found a singularity of message which permeates the channel. MTV celebrates social anomie, cultivates hedonism, and reinforces a particularly virulent form of sexism and racial hatred. Its psychodramas are played out on decadent, increasingly toxic postnuclear landscapes. Youth is not merely celebrated, it is worshiped, as if having white hair and wrinkles are akin to contracting the AIDS virus. The message of MTV? In short, "Life sucks, and then you die."
A Brief History
In many ways, the history of MTV is metaphoric for the corporate culture that spawned it. Born in the heady optimism of the Reagan revolution, its ten years have followed a classic product life-cycle curve: a novelty period of rapid growth followed by maturation, decline, and repositioning through extensive marketing.
MTV was launched on August 1, 1981, a $20 million coventure of Warner Communications and the American Express Company. At the time, the American record industry was in a steep slump and cable television was reeling from a number of financial failures (most notably the rapid demise of CBS Cable, a so-called "culture" channel). MTV was the brainchild of Warner-Amex Vice President Bob Pittman, who had built a reputation in radio for buying "loss leader" radio stations and turning them into profit centers. Buoyed by reams of audience research data, Pittman and his
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