It’s all about not knowing what will happen. Who will be wearing – or not wearing – what. Or who will say what in their acceptance speech.
All on live TV.
The unexpected has kept viewers tuning into the MTV Music Video Awards for 20 years, providing good old-fashioned celeb tomfoolery and water-cooler moments that have people talking for years.
Did you see Michael kiss Lisa Marie? What was L’il Kim thinking with that pastie – and did Diana Ross really have to touch it?
“People love a parade,” says Rob Tannenbaum, senior editor at Blender magazine. “People want to see the VMAs because people love a spectacle. … This is the night where all the freaks are gathered together, instead of the freaks being in different venues, in different recording studios. Everyone from rock “n’ roll is going to be in the same town, in the same building and some deeply weird stuff is going to happen.”
The spontaneity of the show is also the scary part.
“You put a lot of volatile people in a room and see what happens,” says Alex Coletti, producer of the show. “The bar is high, and every year we push it a little higher.”
The awards are different from the Oscars or Grammys.
“The Grammys casts its net a lot wider. It covers a wider age group and many genres of music,” says Coletti. “But we’re so specific on youth culture in a way that we can own it like no one else can.”
The MTV awards, however, haven’t proven to boost music sales.
“The currency for the VMAs is really word of mouth,” says Tannenbaum. “In a lot of cases, it helps the careers of artists in a way that’s much more significant than having them sell records for a couple of years. It can do a much greater long-term thing for your career.”
One of those moments came in 1984, when Madonna performed. All she had done at that point was her debut record, which had sold maybe 2 million.
“A lot of people thought she was just a cute disco-pop singer. People said Cyndi Lauper would have the career; Madonna was just a flash in the pan,” Tannenbaum says.
She came on stage in a wedding dress and sang “Like a Virgin,” which no one had heard before.
“That was one of the first moments when you could look at Madonna and say, “This is a woman who is so smart and has such a great sense of occasion that she’s going to have a long, long career.’ That one appearance changed a lot of people’s minds about her.”
Jameel Spencer, chief marketing officer for P. Diddy’s entertainment group, Bad Boy Worldwide, says the show is the essence of cool.
“The show is so on point with what people want already. Everything about it makes sense,” says Spencer, who will be at the show tonight. “This is the celebration and a culmination of all the best elements of MTV, and it becomes that much more valuable.
“There’s something cool about saying, “Did you see what Jim Carrey did on the VMAs last night?’ There’s something valuable in being on the pulse of what’s cool, what’s now.”
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(c) 2003, Detroit Free Press.
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AP-NY-08-27-03 1515EDT
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