Another Friday, another installment of FNMTV starring our pal Pete Wentz. This week, there are mysteriously only three new videos (T.I., No Age, and Day 26) to go with two live performances (Rihanna and Maroon 5 featuring Rihanna). I wondered what effect the program had on the number of videos played on MTV, and there’s good and bad news. The good (?) news: MTV is certainly devoting a larger amount of its airtime to music videos. The bad news: I hope you like Boys Like Girls.
The weeks prior to the FNMTV premiere almost seemed like a setup for the show’s premise. Two hours of videos in the morning, one hour of TRL in the afternoon, and 21 hours of Made reruns, the new roommates on The Real World, etc. That made for 23 video plays on Wednesday, June 11, and 21 on Thursday, June 12. (Note: A “play” may not be an entire video; it’s just enough of a clip to be counted as a by the computers charged with tracking these sorts of things.) FNMTV premiered June 13, and you can see a huge spike in the number of music videos played: 50 video plays were tracked this past Wednesday, while 58 were tracked yesterday. Although that just meant you got to see at least part of this clip some 11 times over the two days–
–as well as that painful Boys Like Girls video 12 times. Is this an improvement? Maybe, although that depends on whether you value Lil Mama over A Shot At Love II. Is it fair to say the music video is back on MTV if only three or four music videos (and a few live performances) get added to the channel’s rotation each week? Will this whole thing be out the window by the fall? I’m still a little bitter that all we got of “Bastards of Young” was 30 talked-over seconds, so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask.
FNMTV [MTV Online]
You know, I’ve been watching MTV since it went on the air, and I can hardly remember a time when it didn’t suck. Maybe for about 10 minutes in the summer of ‘90 when “Yo MTV Raps” was hitting on all cylinders… but even then it was followed by “The Grind With Dan Cortese”.
And, of course, the legendary IRS’ Cutting Edge… but even that was counterbalanced with the awfulness of Martha Quinn spinning videos from kajagoogoo and ebn-ozn and suchlike… MTV she is a bitch-goddess.
@Clevertrousers: Remote Control was OK. Totally Pauly had its moments. And oh, to remember the days when Adam Curry and I traded CompuServe e-mails.
(haha also the grind was hosted by eric nies, pioneer of the now-standard “parlay your reality-tv fame into perpetual c-listdom” career arc. dan cortese was mtv sports.)
@bcapirigi: actually thursday’s episode of trl dispensed with the countdown in favor of a dance party!
eric nies was wicked hot. and why aren’t there shows with people dancing at four in the afternoon anymore?
Wait, what?!? No Age? Did I read that correctly?
I need to like, take some time to digest that information.
Unfortunately, I keep missing FNMTV, but sometimes catch part of a rerun here and there. I’m not sure what was more adorable, Pete w/ Lil Wayne, or Pete w/ Lil Mama…