If it’s a eulogy for a show, can it be categorized under “Honoring Lives”?

by Melissa in Honoring Lives, News

As many know, the MTV show Total Request Live, known by its nickname TRL, ended its ten-year run on November 16. Many fans and musicians, who made their big breaks appearing on the show, attended the “Total Finale Live” special. I’m guessing millions more saw it on television. It was a poignant ending without the fact that it was the end of a series. Deeper thinking, though, reveals something more painful. It is the official end of an era that has been struggling to stay alive for years, its absence seen but never spoken of despite being so obvious…the end of “M” in MTV.

The Total Request Live we know is actually a hybrid of two MTV shows that aired around the same time.  A news-magazine called MTV Live, which actually leaned more towards current affairs than musical happenings, had a live setting, celebrity appearances and a set with a view of Times Square. Viewers were not impressed by the shiny exterior, however, and the show faced cancellation after only a year. Meanwhile, attention was directed to a program known as Total Request, hosted by Santa Monica DJ Carson Daly. While it featured the viewer-selected video countdown we know and love, it was rather pathetic compared to what it would become, a show format that featured a cheap set and jocular interaction with the crew, similar to E!’s comedy clip show the Soup. Despite, audiences were tuning in, a fact MTV didn’t ignore. Total Request and MTV Live were mixed, renamed, and together as Total Request Live, became the bread-winning show of the channel.

At the start of 2002, an opportunity began to come to Carson Daly, which he felt he couldn’t pass up. The next year, he stepped down from his duties as VJ to host his own late-night talk show, still airing on NBC. Many of Daly’s friends and former guests stepped in for Daly, but MTV ultimately decided to choose Damien Fahey, a radio station intern from Massachusetts, as permanent replacement. Australian Lyndsey Rodrigues joined him in 2007 following an impressing guest appearance. But as they say, good things come to an end. With shows like Laguna Beach and its spin-off gaining popularity, TRL’s viewers dropped to less than 373,000. Rumors of cancellation were circulating, and being denied, as early as last February. Despite flagrant truthfulness of these stories, many fans were shocked when MTV announced TRL’s cancellation in September. On November 13, the last episode aired, highlighted by a ceremonious demolishing of the set.

On Sunday evening, I wandered into the realm of MTV. What I saw was less of a celebration and more of a funeral. The guests, like former host Carson Daly, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Kid Rock, Ludacris and such, eulogized the show and recalled their appearances and how the show effected their careers. Grim faces filled my television screen, and I noticed that too many guests were dressed in black to comfortably be considered a coincidence. As I had mentioned, it was very much a funeral for what MTV originally stood for. TRL was the small flicker of musical involvement left in a channel now famous for disastrous shows featuring scripted reality and amazing amounts of stupidity. Because of this, it became a staple of pop culture and launch dozens of musicians into public recognition. 

 Total Request Live is preceded in cancellation by its French, British, Australian, and CMT versions, along with an abandoned remake that was called YouRL. It is survived by its German, Italian, and Hispanic revisions, as well as multiple VJ’s and musicians.