Michael Tae Sweeney: Is there a media brand that lost more value over the last 25 years than MTV/VH1? Most media conglomerates would kill to have a brand associated with hip youth culture, and Viacom strip mined it with two decades of reality TV dreck and now it's gone bsky.app/profile/cast...

a bunch of dudes I used to work with at Viacom are gonna get fired because of this. Not even sure it's Skydance's fault - Viacom's TV networks have been a mess for at least a decade, executives mismanaged formerly incredible brands like Comedy Central and MTV into the ground.

“…Skydance executives who are set to take over the owner of CBS, Nickelodeon and MTV have identified at least $2 billion in cost cuts that can be made at the company, much of it from its linear media operations…”

Skydance Targets $2 Billion-Plus in Cuts After Paramount Mergervariety.com Skydance plans to make as much as $2 billion in cost cuts after it acquires Paramount Global, largely to overhaul its linear TV businesses

Like 40 different shitty reality shows no one's ever heard of, but ya it's a husk bsky.app/profile/joad...

the hell is there even to cut at MTV at this point

Is there a media brand that lost more value over the last 25 years than MTV/VH1? Most media conglomerates would kill to have a brand associated with hip youth culture, and Viacom strip mined it with two decades of reality TV dreck and now it's gone bsky.app/profile/cast...

Gen X: I remember when MTV showed music videos Millennials: I remember when MTV was culturally relevant Zoomers: I remember when MTV existed

Probably a smart decision. Linear TV is (finally, after several decades of early predictions of its imminent demise) a dying business model bsky.app/profile/oneo...

What I've heard is basically Skydance still wants to make movies but doesn't give a shit about television.

Comedy Central is probably close. People forget what a lockdown CC had on stand-up comedy in the 00s - extremely lucrative niche! Now people use "Netflix special" as a genericized term for a standup special. I don't know if "Comedy Central Presents" even still exists? bsky.app/profile/mtsw...

Is there a media brand that lost more value over the last 25 years than MTV/VH1? Most media conglomerates would kill to have a brand associated with hip youth culture, and Viacom strip mined it with two decades of reality TV dreck and now it's gone bsky.app/profile/cast...

I'm not really saying "they should still play music videos!" probably wouldn't work! Maybe "MTV" shouldn't even be a linear cable network! But keeping the brand associated with youth culture and music would've been a smarter move than filling it with bottom barrel reality shit

Once you could watch music videos on demand I'm sure it was hard to compete which is why they pivoted to reality tv.

You can kinda see how it happened: The Real World was a huge hit and a genuine phenomenon. And it was cheap to make! Not surprising that the executives thought they'd discovered a magic money-printing machine. Alas...

I owe my entire livelihood and career to The Real World, may it and Bunim-Murray burn in hell.

Okay you can’t just let a statement like that hang. Explain?

an MTV unplugged style show could still be huge.

Tiny Desk kinda took its place. NPR—while lacking the youth focused branding of MTV—were able to step in because it’s in a place where people can stumble upon it. They tried bringing it back in 2021, but it’s buried on Paramount+. You can pay for the service and still not know it exists.

What if MTV tries to outhit YouTube as it's on the way up as The Home Of Music Videos Online, I mean easy to play the alternate history game but that sure woulda held value longer than seventeen dating shows feature exclusively people you hate

To be fair, MTV (the company) still has multiple channels that air music: bsky.app/profile/torr...

What's funny is that "MTV" isn't even the TV station that MTV Entertainment Group shows music on, that's "MTV Classic", "MTV2" etc. "MTV" (the channel) shows skanky "reality shows", which makes it even funnier that their median viewer age is 51 😂

but it for Bravo and Discovery....??

Yup. They could reboot it, but it would be a hugely heavy lift, and why bother? Only Gen X (and maybe "elder millennials"?) really has fond memories of it, and Gen X is obviously the smallest possible audience segment

Apparently a channel called MTV classic exists, which has most of its programming dedicated to 80s, 90s and early 00s videos, but I think you can only get it on certain cable packages.

Not only does it not exist anymore, the Comedy Central channel on SiriusXM hasn’t played a new bit by anyone in years on years now. It’s basically a “CD Era Classic Rock” station but for comedy.

Part of that is probably driven by the fact that nobody records stand-up albums any more unless Netflix puts out a recording to win a Grammy

That’s entirely untrue. Check out 800 Pound Gorilla. They’re producing a TON of new standup right now.

Where else can you get your Larry the Cable Guy fix?

Just tuned in and it’s playing a Rachel Feinstein bit from 2016. It may be the newest bit they have on this channel.

My TV stayed glued to Comedy Central unless there was a game on ESPN until about 2006-2007, and now when I peek in on their schedule it’s 19 hours of The Office Their late night schedule used to be TDS/Colbert/@midnight and now two of those are on CBS and the third is back as nostalgia

The Viacom cable brands would all have been under duress no matter what but, holy shit, they couldn’t even clear the lowest expectations for managing them

Short Attention Span Theater was a critical intro to the then-current state of standup for me and all my buddies in junior high and high school. It wasn't all good, but we all knew who the big and even medium-sized standups of the day were.

it's crazy the massive cultural impact Comedy Central had in the aughts and 10's. stand-up, South Park, Daily Show, Colbert, Chappelle, Broad City, Key and Peele, Tosh, Schumer, etc. i know the business model shifted but to seemingly give that all up without really trying is wild to me

I remember the glory days of Comedy Central. with Stewart and Colbert, interesting original programming like Detroiters, and lots of stand up. Now it's all just South Park and Office reruns with Adam Sandler movies on the weekends. It has no brand identity at all anymore.

Paul F Tompkins did a pretty heartbreaking episode of “good one“ where he talks about this. How there is just no more market for standups trying to do a special outside of Netflix and hbo

Also, TikTok has taken over that space tremendously

They have a YouTube channel, but that's the only interaction I've had with Comedy Central since my parents gave up watching every single Daily Show.

Comedy Central used to create some of the funniest and most innovative sketch comedy. They switched to a format of just repeating the half dozen hit shows & stoped taking chances on any new material. And the rare good new material would get killed after a season meaning it wouldn’t even have reruns

My kid is eleven years old, he watches/engages screens more than I should let him, and has watched maybe a dozen hours of Nickelodeon in his life. There's just nothing on there that appeals more than some Canadian making a YouTube video of "How long does it take to touch grass in every Mario game"

i legitimately cant tell if this is satire or not

It's so real that the only notable change in 3.5 years since is that Catfish has taken over like 40% of the Ridiculousness time slots.

god thats grim

That’s what makes it golden. Me either, but it *feels* accurate

looks pretty fucking real based on current programing. www.tvinsider.com/network/mtv/...

MTVwww.tvinsider.com A live TV schedule for MTV, with local listings of all upcoming programming.

It’s not making fun of the content? There is actually a show named ‘Ridiculousness’? What the fuck.

The best part is it's basically just people reacting to YouTube videos and there are 1500 episodes of it.

This is literally what they programmed for the network’s 40th birthday in ‘21. It was insulting.

It is not. Any time I see MTV in an EPG it's just an endless stream of Ridiculousness. And this seems to be the case for multiple channels, though I haven't looked into ownership of all of them. The only one that makes sense is Nick Jr. with it's loop of PAW Patrol. Disney Jr. is similar with Bluey.

"Dawg we heard you like youtube so we youtube on your music TV network!"

Ridiculous

Brutal

Sometimes I think that television executives operate at the same level as a five year old that does something that makes the adults laugh once, then keeps doing it over and over even if nobody's laughing anymore.

Discovery/NatGeo/TLC are probably runner ups? Same playbook though, flood with cheap abusive reality drivel until they die.

bsky.app/profile/rand...

It has been longer since the MTV music video era than the MTV music video era was

Traditional media or can we count Twitter in this? A brand so recognizable that the verb "tweet" became synonymous with it, and Rich Techbro Dude set it all on fire because he has an extremely unhealthy obsession with the letter X

They could have made Behind The Music forever! And we'd love it!

Even their reality TV dreck went downhill! We're nostalgically watching Jersey Shore and Teen Mom, and MTV doesn't even produce *that* anymore!

Do you consider America Online to be a media brand?

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