1990
This MTV clip is from November 11, 1990. As the credits to Unplugged roll, we can hear the jam ending, and in the final moments singer Steven Tyler ad quotes newly popular Saturday Night Live characters Wayne & Garth: “Wayne’s World!” “Excellent!” The Wayne’s World movie won’t come out for another year and a half.
A black screen with small white text reading “If you could travel in time…” appears. Then a man’s face fills the frame and he says he’d go all the way back to the big bang. An intertitle establishes that the subject of this episode of Buzz will be “Time and Memory.”
he series’ opening establishes its highly stylized (especially for a television documentary) approach. There are lots of quick edits and intentionally glitched video and graphics.
This promo features two young women on the streets of New York who talk about how MTV can help debunk stereotypes. More specifically, they mention Living Colour the rock band whose members were Black--something oft commented upon. This promo is an example of how MTV increasingly turned to "real people" in order to comment upon social issues. This promo is a precursor to the reality television programs that would become important spaces where issues like race and sexuality would be turned into television entertainment.
Prior to the debut of Totally Pauly in the summer of 1990, MTV made these promos starring Pauly Shore. Both clips here were taken from flow recorded off the air in May 1990. In both, Shore is a "fish out of water" in a typical masculine scene. In the first, he is working for a gangster who tasks him with various things he doesn't seem equipped for. In the second, he's a member of a football team who doesn't know whether to take the coach's pep talk literally. Both promos end with onscreen graphics: "Totally" MTV. Throughout the years, MTV's promos were important in defining and sustaining the brand--sometimes more important than the actual programs they advertised. Here, MTV knows they want to do something with Pauly, but they are not sure what. Turns out it would be a proto-reality Tv show...Totally Pauly.
VJ Kevin Seal was one of the new VJs hired in the mid-1980s that transitioned from the traditional VJ hosted hours, into the dayparted shows such as120 Minutes, and into the hybridized programs that combined music videos with packages of on-location interviews. Kevin Seal: Sporting Fool featured the VJ venturing out to engage in such “sporting” activities as running with the bulls in Pamplona, or in this case, flying with the Navy’s Blue Angels. In this clip, he takes control of the F/A-18 fighter jet, then introduces a video from Living Colour
In this clip of MTV flow from February 1990, we see an excerpt of the Ben Stiller Show, which was part of MTV's experiment with "vid-com" programming. The idea was to combine comedy with music videos, creating a consistent block that was cheap to produce, but would maintain viewership numbers better than just music videos. A U2 video is ending, then Stiller continues his Bono impersonation, begun in the previous segment, in a parody video suggesting Bono has a god complex. The episode included several segments of Stiller mimicking other performers, including Jimmy Buffett and Milli Vanilli. After the credits role, the intro to Remote Control begins. It is an updated version that portrays them as if they are rock stars going onstage. The program had been very popular, but at this point had waned.
One of MTV's three original TV productions, in addition to Club MTV and Remote Control, was The Big Picture, hosted by Chris Connelly. The program was a halfhour long assemblage of interviews, previews, and behind-the-scenes footage promoting new Hollywood releases. The show was promotional, not critical, in any respect. The series did attempt to remain true to the MTV brand through short segments, humor, and a soundtrack borrowed from MTV clips. In this episode from 1990, Tom Hanks discusses the plot of his new film with Meg Ryan, Joe Vs. the Volcano, while “Plot Synopsis” flashes on-screen. A Jane's Addiction song plays on the soundtrack. In the next segment, Connelly makes light of Rob Lowe's recent sex tape controversy, then a segment on his film Bad Influence plays with an INXS soundtrack. Also notable in this flow, an anti-drunk driving PSA produced by MTV.
This sequence of flow comes from MTV's 120 Minutes in November 1990. It includes a Dial MTV Dictator contest, a Noxzema skin creme ad, a Coke ad with a guitarist who uses a Coke bottle to get in a band, and a noted "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood" ad for Nike starring NBA player David Robinson. That ad was made by the production house Propaganda, which made more music videos than anyone else at the time, and which was often hired to make ads because of it. It might not look like a music video, but the ad is an example of how producing a distinctive style and image was what music video's influence on advertising ultimately ended up being, rather than just quick cuts and rock music. Also, there's an ad for a decorative plate commemorating Elvis's 1968 comeback special. The variety of ads here reveal the range of gender, taste, and even age expected in MTV's audience.
