Sunday, May 23, 2010

MTV, The Blind Hog, and the Acorn

MTV used to be Music Television. I think. Just out of college when it originally booted in 1981 I was already too old for their demographic, so I was aware but not much enamored of it.

MTV networks has changed identities many times since then, like a cable channel that's part of the federal witness protection program. (Ack! Someone over 25 is watching! Hide us!). But somewhere along the line they actually got something right. A program that wasn't aimed at a strictly male demographic, skewed over their age target audience, and was blissfully absent of any mention of anything Jersey--bovine or otherwise.

Daria was a non-spin-off spin-off of
Beavis and Butt-head and was the only other product of MTV animation that lasted more than a season or two. It was so far afield from everything else on the channel that it is a wonder that it lasted for 5 seasons. (IMHO it was the injection of the "song of the week" into the soundtrack of the show that made it valuable to the network as a marketing tool--sort of a non music video music video. )

Some die-hard fans are unhappy about the music changes, a result of exorbitant fees for music licensing, but I'm not one of them. My opinion: striping the show of the original music is an IMPROVEMENT. It allows the show to live up to the timelessness of the characters and stories, and not be bogged down in a retro version of Name That Tune.

The complete Daria is out on DVD, at long last struggling free of the RIAA straight jacket. I think it ranks alongside King of the Hill as proof that animation is as powerful a storytelling device as any three camera brain burp currently broadcast today.

KGH

P.S. WKRP was devastated by the removal of the original music. Hypocrisy on my part? Hardly. WKRP was a show about a small top 40 radio station, not about a small generic elevator music radio station.

LKF Although B&BH was a creation of Mike Judge, the character of Daria was created by staff writers at MTV working on B&BH. Mike Judge gave permission for the spin-off but had no hand in the creation or execution of Daria.

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