“Total Request Live” isn’t.
Two weeks ago, in an effort to save money, MTV’s once-upon-a-time network staple Total Request Life began taping half of its episodes. After the live shows on Monday and Wednesday the following days show’s are recorded live-to-tape.
The one-time epicenter of popular music has fallen greatly since the boy band bubble burst (take that alliteration police!) at the beginning of the decade. David Bauder of the Associate Press breaks down the numbers:
At its peak in 1999, “TRL” had 757,000 viewers a day, with 346,000 of them aged 12 to 17, according to Nielsen Media Research.
So far this year, the show - now seen at 3:30 p.m. ET - averages 351,000 viewers a day, Nielsen said. The 12-to-17-year-old audienceis only 113,000, half what it was only two years ago.
This downward trend makes perfect sense within the current climate of cool. There’s still a mainstream, but its fragmented beyond belief and the notion of kids gathering around a tube to vote for their favorite song doesn’t really apply. There’s this whole new factor… um… what’s it called? It’s on the tip of my — Oh yeah, THE INTERNET. Yeah, that kind of changed things.
It probably didn’t help matters that a few weeks earlier the network cut 250 jobs as part of a major restructuring.
So do we cry a river for the unliveness of TRL? Hell no. What’s hilarious about this story is its suggesting that Total Request Live has been on MTV as long as the network has existed. In fact, the show didn’t premiere until September 1998. Yes it was almost a decade ago… but it was also 1998.
March 21st, 2007 at 2:51 am
Carson Daly always needed a personality transplant.