You’d be forgiven for pondering this 12 months’s MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) was a rebroadcast of a earlier ceremony. From performances by Lenny Kravitz and Public Enemy to the archival red-carpet seems to be worn by many attendees and host Megan Thee Stallion, the present’s homages had been as central to the celebration as the present artists who had been nominated.
The general throwback vibe was supposedly in service of the awards present’s fortieth anniversary. Nevertheless, the ceremony didn’t look that totally different from final 12 months’s VMAs, which featured a tribute to the now-disgraced Diddy or different current ceremonies honoring Busta Rhymes, Purple Scorching Chili Peppers, and LL Cool J. This appears to be MTV’s playbook: force-feeding older viewers ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s nostalgia, particularly now whereas they battle to reel within the younger folks within the age of streaming and TikTok.
For a model that after represented the freshness of youth tradition, it appears to be frozen in time. The cable community is at an attention-grabbing crossroads: Ought to it attempt to court docket an elusive Gen Z viewers, or ought to it maintain chasing the final technology that watched them?
Since 2019, the community has been banking on reunion-style reveals and all-star editions of iconic collection like Teen Mother, Jersey Shore, Catfish, and, most just lately, the previous VH1 present The Surreal Life. When you’re youthful than 30, there’s not a lot on their present schedule that may instantly draw you in, significantly when streamers — like Netflix and even Peacock — are making buzzier content material for youngsters and younger adults, with in style actuality reveals like Love Is Blind, Love Island USA, and The Traitors.
The last word case examine in MTV’s unsure future is its Street Guidelines spinoff The Problem. Now the longest-running present on the community, having began 26 years in the past, the Street Guidelines competitors collection has efficiently carried the legacy of MTV all through structural adjustments and mergers, just lately increasing with an All-Stars version on Paramount+ and The Problem: USA on CBS, and a few worldwide variations.
Nevertheless, the current iteration of The Problem hasn’t precisely maintained the spirit of MTV. At present, the present is trying to conjure recollections of its golden age with Battle of the Eras, the fortieth season of the present, however this system falls flat with out the unvarnished fringe of the previous. What was as soon as a compelling conflict of personalities and novice athletes is now only a generic sports activities competitors.
To observe The Problem from its early days to the place it’s now’s to see how MTV has misplaced its manner as a model. The collection would possibly look like an invincible power in tv, however it’s solely as enjoyable because the infrastructure round it. However what’s the worth of MTV nostalgia with out all of the weirdness and unpredictability?
The Problem represented the rowdy ethos of MTV. Now it’s one thing quite a bit safer.
The Problem has undergone a number of transformations because it premiered in 1998. The present in the end turned a contest between forged members of MTV’s Street Guidelines, the place a gaggle of enticing strangers reside in a touring RV, and Actual World, the place precisely seven enticing strangers share a home. (In later seasons, they added forged members of the relationship present Are You The One?). Sometimes set in an unique location, contestants reside in what is actually a frat home whereas they compete in a collection of bodily and psychological video games. These assignments vary from outrageous stunts — like transferring meals to a faux rooster’s mouth whereas wearing a rooster swimsuit — to brutal elimination challenges, just like the Corridor Brawl the place gamers wrestle one another to achieve the tip of a slim passage.
Over time, the manufacturing’s funds has elevated, and the present has turn into extra bodily demanding and stunt-y consequently. Die-hard followers confer with it as “America’s fifth sport,” and a few opponents even endure intense coaching to organize. Nevertheless, the boozy fights, romantic drama, and rivalries that span the seasons have at all times been as vital because the precise gameplay, a lot in order that the premise of a number of earlier seasons (Battle of the Exes, Rivals, and so forth.) rests upon private beef and alliances. The Problem maintains and extends these years-long storylines by reusing lots of its most infamous and messiest opponents, like Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, Chris “CT” Tamburello, Laurel Stucky, Cara Maria Sorbello, and Aneesa Ferreira.
Whereas the combating and debauchery provides an thrilling layer to an already spectacular athletic showcase, these moments of chaos have usually been really ugly, coming on the expense of girls, folks of colour, and queer folks. Notably in earlier seasons, there’s an uncomfortable quantity of misogynistic language, hostility, and condescension towards feminine gamers. Black contestants have been met with related microaggressions, if not blatant racism.
Producers tried to rectify this in 2020 after they unexpectedly suspended contestant Dee Nguyen for making an inappropriate joke on Twitter in regards to the Black Lives Matter motion. In addition they made the controversial option to edit her out of the remainder of the season. This foreshadowed a extra censored strategy to this system, one that may fully change the texture of The Problem.
Efforts by the community to treatment a tradition of poor habits on The Problem was well-meaning however in the end over-corrective. For instance, night-out scenes, the place a battle would possibly escape or forged members would possibly hook up, are actually used as alternatives for opponents to debate recreation technique. On podcasts devoted to the present, forged members continually complain about messier drama being not noted of the present.
“You see a kind of progress taking place by way of the present not being as problematic because it was earlier than,” says Problem fan Kelli Williams, who co-hosts the podcast Past the Blinds. “However then there’s additionally the [newer] downside that it takes away from the drama of the present.”
In response to BLM and altering moral requirements in actuality TV, The Problem has struggled to evolve whereas specializing in the features of the present that made it enjoyable. In newer seasons, together with the present Battle of the Eras season, the tone of the present has turn into nearly comically severe and inspirational, as if the contestants are competing within the Olympics or for some higher trigger past profitable cash and being on TV. Even the present’s dry, no-nonsense host, T.J. Lavin, has a gentler method. It hardly feels prefer it’s from the identical community that found Snooki and Spencer Pratt.
“You consider somebody like Leroy,” says Williams, of fan-favorite Leroy Garrett, a Actual World alum who first competed on The Problem: Rivals. “When he got here on the present, he was a sanitation employee, and also you’re watching him soar over vehicles over water. You’re like, ‘Wow, he’s not skilled to do that.’ Whereas now folks have to organize for The Problem, they usually name it the ‘fifth sport.’ Be actual proper now. That is The Problem.”
Battle of the Eras catering to Gen X and millennial followers is thrilling in concept. However the neutered flagship present can’t resuscitate the unique DNA of MTV.
The place does MTV go from right here?
MTV was at all times going to have a troublesome time sustaining itself as a cultural tastemaker, particularly as a cable station in a web based world. However the community has a historical past of reinventing itself to satisfy the second. The channel, based in 1981, was initially focused towards white, male rock followers till it was compelled by public stress to characteristic music movies by Black R&B and rap artists, debuting this system Yo! MTV Raps in 1988.
When MTV’s first technology of viewers began outgrowing the channel within the early ’90s, it pioneered actuality programming, beginning with Actual World and, later, reveals like The Osbournes, The Hills, and Jersey Shore. As Amanda Ann Klein writes in her guide Millennials Killed the Video Star, MTV executives have at all times needed to work laborious to keep up MTV’s key demographic. “The youth viewers is fickle as a result of the second an organization figures out methods to create content material that pleases them, they age out of that content material,” she writes.
Actuality reveals sustained the community for practically twenty years, along with music-focused hits like Whole Request Reside (TRL) and MTV Unplugged. The early 2010s noticed the ultimate season of Jersey Shore, the shock scripted hits like Awkward and Teen Wolf, and the final really memorable VMAs due to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke – earlier than a couple of years coming into the proverbial programming desert, working episodes of the clip present Ridiculousness nearly 24/7. By 2019, it appeared as if MTV had discovered an answer by upcycling profitable IP. The reunion present Jersey Shore: Household Trip garnered large rankings and was adopted by a Teen Mother reunion collection and a not-as-successful reboot of The Hills. On Paramount+, MTV launched The Problem: All Stars and Actual World: Homecoming.
A lot of MTV’s library of ’90s and early-aughts content material additionally turned accessible to stream on Paramount+. Within the guide Tv’s Streaming Wars, Florida State College professor Leigh H. Edwards writes about how MTV’s nostalgic advertising and marketing technique cleverly (if not quickly) reignited curiosity within the model. “In impact, MTV turns current IP into new content material on streaming that targets the older streaming viewers and inspiring these viewers to rewatch older content material,” she tells Vox. “These collection generate nostalgia by together with flashback footage that encourages audiences to go watch the unique episodes.”
This nostalgia strategy, although, is extra like a life jacket than a sustainable marketing strategy. Actual World: Homecoming is now not accessible to stream and was seemingly canceled. The Problem: All Stars has turn into much less and fewer distinguishable from the unique collection because the casts overlap. Regardless of all of the relative star energy of Battle of the Eras, the landmark season nonetheless represents a rankings decline because the extremely watched thirty fifth season, Whole Insanity. Final 12 months, Selection reported that MTV was the forty fourth most-watched tv community in 2023, an 11 % drop in complete viewers from the earlier 12 months.
If there’s any hope for an MTV revival, it’s that the viewership for this 12 months’s VMAs elevated by 8 % in comparison with final 12 months’s present. One has to assume this has extra to do with appearances by large, next-gen artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — in addition to rankings magnet Taylor Swift — than the present’s tributes to its peak period. At a time when networks are continually renamed, rebranded, or fully scrapped, shedding MTV wouldn’t be stunning, however it might be an enormous cultural blow. Sadly, a community can solely depend on nostalgia for therefore lengthy earlier than it seems to be like a graveyard.
