Word: channelling
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...still nominally a music channel. But in the era of J. Lo and American Idol, The Osbournes and the Michael Jackson circus, being a music channel does not mean being about only music. Says MTV Networks Group president Judy McGrath: "Music culture is now a place where you'll find Liza Minnelli and OutKast and the Queer Eye guys on the same stage." So a popular VH1 subgenre is shows about current celebrity culture only tangentially related to music--Fabulous Life of ..., 100 Hottest Hotties and so on. "I was in Puerto Rico at our sales meeting," says VH1 president...
Thanks to the tireless efforts of VH1, it is becoming nearly impossible, dude, not to remember. A longtime way station for people too old for sister network MTV and too young for the History Channel, the music network found sudden relevance in 1997 with water-cooler hit Behind the Music, a saucy bio show about the travails of rock stars. But VH1 binged on the show, running and running it until it collapsed (much like its earlier hit Pop-Up Video). In 2002, with ratings scraping bottom, the network brought in new management to decide, in effect, what...
...That '70s Show and the Brady Bunch movies--and the network courted it with I Love the 70s and I Love the 80s, limited-run series in which moderately famous actors, comics and musicians riffed on mass-culture icons from Kojak to Kajagoogoo. The series riveted twenty-and thirtysomething channel surfers, as though tripping a Manchurian Candidate--like synapse. In just over a year, VH1's ratings jumped more than 100% among 18-to-49-year-old viewers. (Also, of course, recycling culture is faster--and often cheaper--than creating original entertainment...
...channel's success is in capturing the tone of Gen X nostalgia, at once snide and affectionate. Executive vice president Michael Hirschorn calls VH1's focus not "nostalgic" but "retro," which he defines as less "sentimental and teary." (Although one could reasonably define it as "I am so not old enough to be nostalgic.") "The channel had been in a baby-boomer mode, which was very serious about music," he says. "We turned that into 'Let's have fun with pop culture...
Five years and about 29 VH1 presidents ago, someone at the channel approached me about creating a show. So I pitched an animated sitcom in which I would interview two celebrities an episode and then build a flimsy plot around them involving a guy named Joel Stein who works at a magazine. If VH1 had wanted imagination, it would have gone to David Lynch...