MTV gets with a new program: The network takes a leap with more viewer-generated content
Source: Los Angeles Times (
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...dlines-entnews)
Though it might appear that shows like "Laguna Beach," "The Real World" and "The Hills" have defined young people better than any others, MTV is moving away from high-gloss and into homemade.
In an attempt to reconnect with young audiences that have drifted from the channel recently, MTV will begin to roll out series that showcase the best of the Web, require heavy viewer participation and feature the lives of real teens. While YouTube and MySpace made noise first by trafficking in do-it-yourself media, MTV will now put viewers in the driver's seat by serving teens the entertainment they crave most: the kind they create.
Internet pages about themselves. Video shorts they direct. Sliced and diced bits of movies and TV shows, re-cut into something new. In an exclusive interview with The Times, Brian Graden, MTV Networks' music group entertainment president, unveiled a different direction for the channel in which MTV acts as the hub for multitasking teenagers.
"TRL" ("Total Request Live"), once the network's demographic-defining show, will get a new title and a creative overhaul this summer. Graden said online participation would become essential when the show relaunches.
Music videos on the channel outside of "TRL" will also get a face-lift, and by summer "a good number of the videos in rotation" will have the viewers' thumbprints on them, Graden said. Even for a network that prides itself on innovation, the gamble is a big one. "It's all kind of radical," Graden said, in a tone both excited and anxious.
So apparently it's an "overhaul," not a complete cancellation of the show, but it saze right there, it's not gonna be called TRL anymore. Which means TRL is dead. Finally, after all this time, could this one finally be the real deal?