Ken Ober, host of MTV's Remote Control, dead at age 52.
posted by Lucinda on Nov 16, 2009 - 55 comments

MTV vs. martial law. [more inside]
posted by zardoz on Nov 11, 2009 - 44 comments

Twenty years ago in Berlin a wall came down. But at a free concert last night given by U2 in front of the Brandenburg Gate, MTV Europe decided to put a wall back up.
posted by jefficator on Nov 6, 2009 - 66 comments

STEVIE WASHINGTON- THE ANGRY YOUTH! [more inside]
posted by Dr-Baa on Aug 20, 2009 - 7 comments

Central Massachusetts, sometime in early 1985. You were cranking your way through the UHF dial when you caught a glimpse of Rock and Roll. It was V66, and you were hooked. [more inside]
posted by dirtdirt on Aug 14, 2009 - 22 comments

Sam Kieth is an interesting guy, coming from an artistic family (including a cousin who created the animated series Cow and Chicken). His professional work has mostly been in the world of comics, though he did direct a movie for Roger Corman, entitled "Take it to the Limit" (2000), as a way "to recharge [his] batteries after the Maxx." The Maxx was a 35 issue comic (plus a few bonuses), and later animated and aired on Mtv's Oddities in the mid 1990s. (More videos inside) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Jun 21, 2009 - 31 comments

It's finally happened: After a decade of struggle with MTV over royalty fees and the belief that there would be no market for it, The State is finally being released on DVD on July 19th, 2009. Until then, you can watch streaming video (albeit chopped up in an irritating way) of the episodes from MTV's site, via Hulu, and compare differences such as the soundalike placed in for The Breeders' "Cannonball" in this famous sketch.
posted by Navelgazer on Apr 20, 2009 - 83 comments

Julie Brown, Chris Elliott, Kathy Griffin, Bobcat Goldthwait and others spoof Madonna in Medusa: Dare To Be Truthful: Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 26, 2009 - 9 comments

CollegeHumor, which peddles fraternity pranks and workplace stunts to an online audience of millions, is making the move to television this Sunday. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Feb 5, 2009 - 47 comments

Hey, what ever happened to Julie Brown? ( not that one) She was a hit in Earth Girls Are Easy with her number, Cause I'm a Blonde. She had another hit with the Dr. Demento staple The Homecoming Queens' Got a Gun! Then she faded into the cultural-artifact twilight ... [more inside]
posted by The Whelk on Dec 30, 2008 - 37 comments

Sifl & Olly are two sockpuppets that had a show on MTV from 1997 to 1999. In the time allotted to them, they would conduct interviews, take calls from the public, and shill for the Precious Roy Home Shopping Network. In between, they’d talk with their friend Chester, and ROCK!! Call now, and Precious Roy will throw in this extra large tube of S&O, that's four hours and thirty-seven minutes worth for ya kids, let's take some calls! [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Dec 5, 2008 - 56 comments

Can you tell a person on television just what you think? If you live in Columbus, Ohio, you would be able to tell the people at a television station how you feel. All you have to do is push a button. The people in this city are trying out a new kind of television called QUBE TV.
posted by Otis on Nov 7, 2008 - 40 comments

MTVMusic Music to your eyes.
posted by ColdChef on Oct 27, 2008 - 84 comments

In 2003, Jordan Morris was bored. So, he did what any normal college graduate would do to entertain himself -- he made up a complicated and absurd story in order to prank a prank show, MTV's Burned. Particularly enjoyable: Jordan's absurd flopping about when the "burn" is "revealed." Jordan Morris is the co-host of Jordan, Jesse, GO! and friend-of-MetaFilter The Sound of Young America (previously here, and elsewhere.)
posted by Fuzzy Skinner on Apr 10, 2008 - 72 comments

Those of us who were born in the 1970's have a number of indelibly permanent shared experiences. Relive a few of them with 3 hours of MTV from 1983. [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall on Jan 26, 2008 - 56 comments

A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. MTV made a show out of her because, amongst other reasons, she has over 2.5 million friends on myspace and she claims not to discriminate. The cast bios are interesting fucking ridiculous. The latest has her and some dude named Bobby breaking up. Fan sites are abuzz.
posted by gman on Jan 11, 2008 - 103 comments

It's Friday afternoon. 1981 - 1982ish. I just got home from high school and I want some MTV. Back then, MTV played these things called "music videos". But they didn't have a large catalog of them yet, so they tended to play everything they had. You really got to see some lesser known classics. For Example: Jan Hammer/Neal Schon Lies. The Hitmen Bates Motel. Utopia Feet Don't Fail Me Now. Landscape My Name is Norman Bates. Chilliwack My Girl. Ultravox Vienna. Snakefinger Man in the Dark Sedan. [more inside]
posted by wittgenstein on Sep 23, 2007 - 128 comments

120 Minutes is a tumblr page put together by a fan of the long running MTV alt-rock show, with links to dozens (at least) of videos from the show's heyday. There's no search nor sort that I could find, but the site makes for fun browsing for fans of that particular musical era. [more inside]
posted by jonson on Sep 7, 2007 - 17 comments

Two stunning minutes of MTV Though, you'll only see it in South America.
posted by parmanparman on Sep 2, 2007 - 53 comments

Augenblick Studios provide many strange and offensive animated cartoon video films including Superjail. You may be familiar with their work!!! [flash, mayhap quicktime]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Jul 3, 2007 - 7 comments

In the Fall of 1991, MTV's 120 Minutes released two compilations (Amazon: one, two) of songs from the show. (Youtube: one, two)
posted by nervousfritz on Jun 18, 2007 - 45 comments

Clell Tickle: Indie Marketing Guru. 3 Conversations with Maya Arulpragasam. Partisan Jab. Other Music. The Shittiest Mixtape Ever Contest. Lie Girls. etc. Ever since GooTube, we've been hearing about how online video will propel a new generation of talent to superstardom, but so far it's seemed mostly hype. Tonight, after literally decades of climbing the online video charts, Aziz, Rob, Paul, Jason and Bobbe'J make their MSM debut in MTV's The Human Giant.
posted by Tones on Apr 5, 2007 - 10 comments

The 120 Minute Archive -- an attempt to gather all of the playlists of MTV's now-defunct late-night alternative rock program which ran from 1986 to 2003. Along with the videos were loads of live performances. Sure, it went down in quality in its second half. But where else in the pre-Internet days of 1992 could small-town kids discover Tom Waits, Morrissey and Sonic Youth in a single sitting?
posted by Bookhouse on Feb 3, 2007 - 55 comments

In 1999, MTV aired 25 Lame, a show where retired 25 of their worst and most overplayed videos. Rob Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice) showed up to help them retire the video for "Ice Ice Baby." The result - violence, hilarity, and broken mannequins (video, 30-second ad shows before video). Apparently unplanned, nobody knows for sure if this outburst was the product of genuine anger, or if he was just playing around. An unedited version (YouTube, lower quality) leads me to think that it was the former.
posted by Afroblanco on Feb 1, 2007 - 33 comments

mtvU and GE are sponsoring a contest among colleges to create sustainable energy projects. The finalists' projects range from campus-wide runoff reduction proposals to a public bicycle-based laptop charger for students. The winner receives a $25,000 grant to implement their project, which is unfortunately small potatoes compared to the millions of dollars required to, for example, convert an entire vehicle fleet to biodiesel. unrelated, previously.
posted by mkb on Jan 19, 2007 - 6 comments

Merry Christmas, Metafilter! In the spirit of the holiday, my gift for the Radiohead fans among you is this entire Radiohead concert (Google Vid), a non-bootleg produced for MTV originally recording from the OK Computer tour back in 1997. For the non-Radiohead fans, my gift is that I forgive you your imperfections. And finally, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, my gift is that I made you a cookie... but then I eated it.
posted by jonson on Dec 24, 2006 - 39 comments

I want my MTV. MTV is now mostly reality, titillation TV, rarely showing music videos anymore. YouTube fills the void somewhat, but sometimes you want to just sit back and let someone else take care of the programming. MusicPlusTV is sort of like the old MTV, but they stream to your computer instead of to your TV.
posted by caddis on Dec 15, 2006 - 23 comments

MTV turns 25 today. Music Television, otherwise known as MTV, was launched with its first broadcast on 1 August 1981, 25 years ago today. Famously, the first video broadcast was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." Ironically, MTV evidently isn't going to acknowledge its anniversary on-air in any way, with a spokeswoman saying that "We made the decision when MTV was founded to always stay young and evolve with our audience. To do that, it has been important to serve our audience at that moment, not our audience of yesterday." This is about par for the course, though, since when was the last time that MTV actually broadcast music videos? A broader question: does anybody who wasn't weaned on MTV (or anybody who was, for that matter) care anymore?
posted by blucevalo on Aug 1, 2006 - 121 comments

Youtubefilter: Gnarls Barkley performs "Crazy," unites Rebellion and Empire.
posted by bardic on Jun 15, 2006 - 50 comments

Aeon Flux, animated Series. This may kill all your time today. With the release of the new Aeon Flux Movie, they are releasing some of their animated shorts on their Overdrive application. Unfortunately, I can't provide a direct link to it, since it goes through a flash interface. You can get their by clicking on the 'movie' link on top. Requires IE, Flash, and probably windows only.
posted by countzen on Dec 2, 2005 - 50 comments

Gorillaz perform "Feel Good Inc" live at the MTV Europe Music Awards, using smoke and mirrors to neat effect. I wish the the band members weren't all smacked out in suitable rock fashion, though.
posted by elphTeq on Nov 15, 2005 - 64 comments

Subverting childrens television shows isn't exactly new, but when did it become mainstream?
posted by tighttrousers on Jul 28, 2005 - 15 comments

I LOVE YOU I WANNA LOVE YOU TENDER . You could be my only sweet surrender. I would never bring you any kind of sorrow. (38 Mb QT)
posted by Peter H on Jan 13, 2005 - 23 comments

A student asked the Master, "What is the nature of the Unofficial Daria Movie Rumor Page?" The Master repiled, "The Page is a long, confusing story told backwards. It is lies and half-truths, yet it is the greater truth. It is a mirror, a puppet show, a morality tale, a fiction which is real life, an homage yet the reverse of an homage. It is the future, set in the present, retelling the past. It is the present, set in the present, retelling the present." The student said, "Huh?" The Master continued, "If all else fails, look at the very bottom of the Page, past the links and the Web rings." The student, not understanding, did as the Master told him. It was then that he was enlightened.
posted by pieoverdone on Jan 8, 2005 - 17 comments

This turns into one of those cases where researching a story gets weirder. The documentary Super Size Me centers on a documentary filmmaker's 30 day experience eating nothing but McDonalds. The film is doing amazingly well as a limited release documentary grossing more per screen than high-budget Troy. Here is the weird part, Reuters has picked up on a distributor press release claiming that MTV is refusing to air advertising for Super Size Me because the film is "disparaging to fast-food restaurants". The Reuters short seems to have quite a bit of legs. However a Hollywood Reporter article details MTVs side of the story placing the blame on the film's distributor. Is this really a case of a network getting cold feet? Or is it a case of distributor trying to pull the "too edgy for MTV" moneymaking ploy? And what is with the continually morphing Reuters clip that is just now being tossed onto doorsteps and stuffed into newsboxes across North America? (The film was previously discussed on metafilter back in January.
posted by KirkJobSluder on May 27, 2004 - 23 comments

This Is Where I Get My Read On Just in case MTV Cribs was coming to your, uh, crib.
posted by turbanhead on Apr 20, 2004 - 43 comments

Batman and Robin have been spotted on the streets of Whitley england, saving damsels in distress, scaring wrongdoers and even chasing naked men from football fields. Other self-made superheroes making news range from the amusing to the disturbing. Even MTV and Stan Lee are jumping into the fray with a casting call for a reality TV show where contestants will compete against each other in a show designed to develop their superhero characters and test their mettle as defenders of justice.
posted by Stuart_R on Apr 19, 2004 - 14 comments

Madonna's being sued for stealing images from Guy Boudin's photography and using them in her Hollywood video. Here are side by sides. When does imitation/homage become theft? And who gets to decide? Should she have been sued for using this image in her vogue video?
posted by archimago on Sep 30, 2003 - 86 comments

Tonight was the 20th anniversary of the MTV Video Music Awards. They sucked. Even the Olsen Twins sucked, and I know how much all you mefites love them. Britney did make out with Madonna though.
posted by TurkishGolds on Aug 28, 2003 - 48 comments

The video MTV doesn't want you to see [.asx. file]: Apparently the new Foo Fighters video is just too risque for the cutting edge entertainment channel (~pffft). This brief NYpost article has more. Either way, it's hilarious. It co-stars Jack Black, which is good enough for me. "Let's put the hammer down!"
posted by Witty on Jul 2, 2003 - 33 comments

The CBS News American Idol Power Hour. Viacom, owner of networks CBS and MTV among many others, is aggresively pushing lucrative bribes offers for Private Jessica Lynch to get her on CBS News, including the possibility of her own video-hosting program on MTV and special editions of TRL. Corporate consolidation the way it is, are we in an era where synergy allows news-media-owning companies to offer not just material profit but flat-out media iconization in exchange for a good story? To put it another way: have we gone beyond using the news to promote entertainment owned by the same company to using entertainment as the currency to flat-out buy the news?
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Jun 16, 2003 - 12 comments

The Internet is better than MTV!
posted by son_of_minya on Jun 14, 2003 - 11 comments

better luck tomorrow goes into wide release today. an unknown filmmaker funds his project on ten maxed out credits cards. then, it is chosen out of over 1,000 films to be featured at sundance. then, without an agent, it becomes the first *acquisition* ever for mtv films in conjunction with paramount. and it has an entirely asian-american cast who weren't cast into stereotypical roles. today, it goes into wide release. i'm excited to see how this film does.
posted by notoriousbhc on Apr 25, 2003 - 31 comments

Jackass sues Jackass! The jackass of the first part, who had his name legally changed to Jack Ass in order to raise awareness about drunken driving somehow, has sued Viacom, owners of MTV, proud presenters of Jackass, a show about grown men falling over things and drinking pee pee, for *ahem* defamation of character. Frivolous lawsuit at its finest, or should Mr. Ass check the dictionary?
posted by mikrophon on Jan 2, 2003 - 18 comments

"A placid boat ride past sets of harmonizing, doe-eyed dolls just doesn't cut it for kids raised on Quake and MTV." Epcot's new Mission: Space to feature intense g-force and weightlessness simulation. How is this possible and still be Disney-safe? Even though that caught my attention, the article is really about how Disney's creative engineers are having trouble staying a few steps ahead of the tech-savvy kiddies.
posted by archimago on Nov 26, 2002 - 15 comments

Yesterday's NYT magazine section (reg req'd) featured a profile of Jack Osbourne---whose family's show premieres its second season tomorrow---and discussed the unpleasant repercussions of his new fame: a prescription to Zoloft, a discontinued high school education and severe threats that warrant his own eye-patched bodyguard. Is this kind of exposure (especially in a reality TV context) too much for a 17 year old kid to handle?
posted by adrober on Nov 25, 2002 - 17 comments

Even though it was tricky to rock around, he wore his Adidas proudly. RIP Jam Master J of groundbreaking rap group Run DMC was shot and killed today. Remember where you were when these forerunners of rap came on the scene?
posted by wolfgangnorton on Oct 30, 2002 - 60 comments

Christina Aguilera unintentionally promotes Thai sex tourism in latest video. Somebody fire the set designer quick!
posted by monkeymike on Oct 21, 2002 - 43 comments

MTV bans Public Enemy 's video "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need" because the video contains the lyric "Free Mumia and H Rap Brown". MTV are willing to air the video if the lyric is cut. Public Enemy front-man Chuck D is vocal in his response. Responsible action or censorship in its worst form?
posted by nthdegx on Sep 14, 2002 - 75 comments

Growing up in the MTV generation. Reading the earlier Eminem link just reminded me how much MTV has been part of my socialization as a child of the 80's. MTV is a business that has effected not only how i look at the world, but also how i view myself. I'm just curious if there's anyone else out there who have felt so strongly shaped by (through reaction to or following of) MTV.
posted by NGnerd on Aug 22, 2002 - 53 comments