14 DAY TRIAL // MTV's Total Request Live (TRL) is beginning to "live" less. Funny to see that, really: for years in a row, the TRL has been quite a milestone in MTV's evolution and even history and at the peak of the show's existence, it roughly had 750,000 viewers a day; now, things have begun their decline... some say it's the natural way things should be as the Gauss theorem clearly explains such a behavior. Let's take a closer look...
It looks like TRL is no longer bringing in the money it used to do and this is why some budget cutting was severely due. And since having a live TV feed is way more expensive (and -why not-safe) than actually having it taped, MTV started to tape the TRL show two weeks ago.
Still, they claim that nothing will change and the recorded show will not be edited. Still, the rest of the world is discussing the matter. The TRL became so popular exactly because it was live, because people could actually interact with what was going on there and this really meant a lot!
Stars like Britney Spears, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Beyonce or Mariah Carey boosted audience each time they made an appearance in the show, and because the interactivity the TRL promoted and sustained, the public used to have a major interest in it. Now, on one hand, TV has kinda lost its powers as major interest-points have moved online; on the other hand, it seems like the show evolved in a slightly different direction than the audience has.
Actually, having such a show for almost 10 years is one of the network's records (the TRL is actually the third longest show in MTV's history); yet, it looks like the world isn't by far what it used to be back then - hence the rather small amount of surprise in the decline of "catch". Maybe it's time for something different, especially that the M in MTV stands for music. It may be a fair assertion to say that maybe the show would be better off dead than re-animated, taped-to-live and somehow cosmeticized.
Maybe it's time to really move on. Invent something new!