Alan Hunter helped place the video-bingeing network on the music map as among the five original VJs that launched MTV into the Moonman orbit 40 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1981.
However, when he went to Daytona Beach, Fla., for the very first time in 1986 to chronicle “the anarchy that was spring break,” he had no idea that it would be the beginning of the end for the M — music — in MTV.
Hunter, 64, told The Washington Post, “I was the VJ that liked being out of the studio the most, so I was the one they sent to spring break to be a part of the hundreds of shouting young people breaking beers over my head.”
“And it was the start of the many types of shows you’d see.” That was when MTV determined that they couldn’t just remain a video jukebox forever. MTV began focusing its cameras upon the lives of the young people who watched the channel.”
Thirty-five years after that coverage, there is a whole generation of young people who don’t know that MTV ever played music videos. This helps explain why young pop stars such as Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Megan Thee Stallion didn’t even bother to show up for the Video Music Awards last year.
To them — and many others in the music industry and beyond — MTV is no longer the cultural force it once was, when Madonna humped around with a wedding gown to “Like a Virgin” there at 1984 VMAs, Kurt Cobain deconstructed Nirvana on “MTV Unplugged” in 1993, as well as Beyoncé and Jay-Z made their relationship public on “Total Request Live” in 2002.
Former MTV producer Michael Alex commented, “The MTV that people remember from the 1980s was a fantastic thing.” But nostalgia will not really pay the bills, he added: “There’s the cultural loss versus [the fact that] MTV was an ongoing company trying to stay afloat.” “The station clung to the song for as long as it could.”
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