MTV Faces a Mid-Life Crisis

By Richard Zoglin

New art forms do not usually emerge with such neat birth dates, but consider Aug. 1, 1981. On that day a cable channel called MTV made its debut, offering a round-the-clock barrage of music videos -- short films set to rock songs and produced by record companies to promote their performers. These imaginative, visually arresting clips soon caught on; rock music was suddenly something to look at, not just listen to. Such performers as Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper rode to success on them; top Hollywood directors, including John Landis and Brian De Palma, tried their hand at making them. The glitzy, fast-paced "MTV style" seeped into everything from movies to television commercials. MTV, in short, was hot.

The heat, if you haven't noticed, is off. A month short of its sixth anniversary, MTV is singing a more troubled tune. Ratings have fallen off, and so has much of the excitement. A couple of hours spent watching MTV today reveal how quickly the avant-garde can become passe. With a few exceptions (the dazzling tattoo of animated images that illustrates Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer), videos have settled into a yawn-provoking rut. Typically they feature scenes of the band in performance intercut with snippets of a fanciful "story" or dressed up with now familiar visual gimmicks (cliche of the season: neoprimitive black and white). Is MTV an idea whose time has already gone?

To be sure, TV's first and still preeminent music-video channel is in no danger of demise. MTV is now available in 35.8 million cable homes, up from 2.5 million when it started. Though the number of viewers at any given time is relatively small, advertisers continue to seek MTV's desirable teenage audience. Net revenues have risen steadily (from $71 million in 1984 to $111 million in 1986, according to industry figures), and last year MTV turned a profit of $47 million.

But numerous onscreen changes have signaled a mid-life crisis. By the end of next month, all five of the channel's original veejays (MTV's equivalent of radio disk jockeys) will have left or been let go. Their replacements are a younger corps that includes Britisher Julie Brown, 27, and Dweezil Zappa, 17, son of Veteran Rocker Frank Zappa. A few years ago MTV tried to broaden its appeal by adding the mellower sounds of Lionel Richie, Billy Joel and others; now it has returned to its original emphasis on hard rock and heavy-metal bands, with softer ballads largely relegated to its sister service, VH-1 (available in 20.8 million homes). The channel's format has been diversified with more live programming, sitcoms (reruns of The Monkees and a British import called The Young Ones) and nonmusic inserts, like a series of reports on rock groupies. "We have changed directions," says MTV Entertainment President Tom Freston, successor to MTV Founder Robert Pittman, who left last fall to start his own media company, "from focusing on music alone to including life-style, the way people look, feel, dress. The challenge is to maintain freshness."

The first indication that something was amiss at MTV came, as it usually does in the TV world, from the A.C. Nielsen Co. At the height of its popularity in 1983 and '84 (when Michael Jackson's Thriller was a hit attraction), MTV's ratings hovered between 1% and 1.2% of its potential audience. By the fall of 1985, the ratings had sunk to .6%, and they have not improved much since. MTV executives dispute the numbers, claiming that Nielsen's sample underrepresents males between the ages of twelve and 24, an important segment of its audience.

Whatever the true extent of the erosion, it was probably inevitable. MTV's success spawned a host of imitators, such as NBC's Friday Night Videos and WTBS's Night Tracks, which diluted the audience. A more serious problem, in the view of many, has been the declining quality of the videos, which record companies supply to MTV at no charge. "MTV has no control over their main source of programming, and that's the video clips," notes Video Producer Ken Walz. "They're trapped by what they get for free."

After a lively period of experimentation when MTV was young, record companies have grown more cautious. Some, like CBS Records, have cut back on the number of videos they produce. Others have put a tighter rein on budgets, which average between $50,000 and $100,000 a clip. For all their artistic aspirations, rock videos are intended mainly as promotional tools; by that measure, a low-budget clip of the band in concert may do the job just as well as a more elaborate "concept" video. Says Video Director Wayne Isham: "What's good these days is what sells product."

What's good is also what sells to MTV. It is the prime showcase for music videos, so its choice of what to air is crucial for any act seeking national exposure. Such power has led to many complaints about MTV's musical selections, most notably charges during its early years that it was ignoring black performers. Meanwhile, the network has solidified its dominance by striking deals with the largest record companies, in which it pays for the right to air certain videos exclusively.

Exposure on MTV can still have substantial impact. The success of such currently hot groups as Bon Jovi and Poison is largely traceable to the saturation airplay given their videos on MTV. One popular band, Journey, last year opted not to produce a video to go with its new album. But when sales lagged, the group released one belatedly, and business promptly picked up. "There's no doubt that its impact has leveled off," says Gil Friesen, president of A&M Records. "But if MTV weren't to survive, someone else would come along and reinvent it."

With reporting by Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York