MTV turns 25, and as pointed in this article, rarely has the "M" anymore...
my question to you is, if there was no MTV, would Prince still have been successful..
http://www.lohud.com/apps...80318/1031
MTV at 25
By JIM ABBOTT
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL





(Original publication: July 28, 2006)



I want my MTV.

That used to be the slogan, back when "Thriller" was a big deal. When I had a crush on Martha Quinn. When it was more about "M" than TV.

Now, sometime after 3 a.m. on a recent weekday morning, I just want my MTV to stop. It has been nearly four hours, and not one music video has been played in its entirety.

Only 21 hours to go.

MTV celebrates its 25th anniversary on Tuesday.

To mark the occasion, I am watching the network for 25 consecutive hours. Except for bathroom breaks and runs to the fridge, I am observing what MTV has become.

"You'll never make it," predicts my 15-year-old son, who would never dream of wasting time in such a frivolous way. Not intentionally.

Strangely, he also knows the plot lines of the many episodes of "Next" and "Parental Control" that flow continuously, like a twig on a mighty river. Leaning his head into the room, he offers a typical reaction: "Oh, I've seen that one."

"Next" and "Parental Control" are reality shows.

On the former, a bus delivers five eligible singles to a potential dream date who can reject them by saying "Next!" If dreamboat likes the bus dweller, then he or she can offer a second date, risking rejection if bus dweller elects to take the option of keeping $1 for each minute of the first "date."

The caliber of contestants? One guy's claim to fame was drinking his own urine to win concert tickets — for O-Town!

On "Parental Control," parents unhappy with a child's boyfriend or girlfriend pick out two potential replacements, who arrive for trial dates that the current love connection has to watch on TV with the disapproving parents. Fun.

The child makes the final pick in a melodramatic denouement that always goes something like this: "Dad, I know why you picked Chad, because he's strong and athletic and shares my love of pressed flowers." More often, however, the kids hang on to the losers.

Am I into these shows?

No, but after four hours, I am definitely in the rhythm. I almost can feel my brain softening, in a way that it never did watching Talking Heads' "Once In a Lifetime," which I probably did about 1,000 times in the 1980s.

Let's not be real: MTV was always about being self-absorbed. But somewhere between Live Aid and Live 8, the notion was transformed from an art into a science. Music is just a distraction now.

Oh, you can still find videos.

"After Hours" started at 5 a.m., featuring full-length videos by Nelly Furtado ("Promiscuous"), Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Dani California"), Busta Rhymes ("I Love My Chick") and Head Automatica ("Graduation Day"). Somewhere along the way, it became Wake Up, but apparently MTV's core audience doesn't sleep much.

Important point: Music videos are still awesome. "Graduation Day" is a colorful, compact visual story, right out of MTV's early days. Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" is a stylized period piece with breezy choreography. It's all fun to watch.

There's just not enough of it.

MTV showcases its hottest videos in the "Big 10," a ridiculously short list that means it doesn't take long to reach saturation on "Promiscuous," "Ain't No Other Man," Rihanna's "Unfaithful" or Ashlee Simpson's "Invisible."

Ashlee, of course, used to be on a reality show, just like newcomer Cheyenne Kimball, a guitar-toting junior version of Sheryl Crow. In the episode that I saw, she gleefully accepted free clothes and lobbied successfully to get her boyfriend on her first music video — for the theme song of her show.

Don't forget self-promotion. Watching 25 hours of MTV goes way beyond self-absorbed.

I tried to count the MTV promos (175 or so by my estimation), the safe-sex ads (about a half-dozen) and the ads about hooking up for text messages with that bikini-clad babe (about equal to the safe-sex messages). There were ads for the Army, and even more for diet pills.

The survival kit: Four liters of Mountain Dew, two cheese pizzas, a canister of potato chips and a small birthday cake. It didn't prevent involuntary dozing around the 10-hour mark, but that was during a "TRL" rerun, anyway.

Most everything on MTV is a rerun, which might have explained my irrational excitement about a blockbuster new "TRL" with Kate Hudson, Owen Wilson, Beyonce, the Wayans brothers and even a phone update from Nick Lachey. Maybe that's just what happens when you've been watching MTV for 15 hours.

Soon it was back into the reality-show cocoon of "Room Raiders," "The Hills," "Made" and, in my final hour, back-to-back episodes of "My Super Sweet 16" — impossibly spoiled rich kids in private jets, hiring circus performers and elephants, and otherwise committing acts of opulent excess, complaining all the while.

At least they gets what they want.


?...

Define success.

MTV's inclusion of Little Red Corvette and 1999 in its video rotation did help to raise awareness of Prince's music with "mainstream" audiences, probably making it easier for WB to envision some success with the Purple Rain movie and provide financial backing to make it. And there is no doubt that MTV was a significant force in the promotion of the movie and soundtrack, but at that time, any act launching a new album would turn to MTV as another outlet for reaching the target audience.

However, I think that the success of Purple Rain was a situation where all the planets were properly aligned and it would have broken out, created a buzz and seen great success even if MTV wasn't in the picture. If there was no MTV and all artists were operating without it, the result would have been the same.

After PR, MTV's support of Prince steadily declined. Without heavy rotation on their channel, Prince began to disappear from mainstream consciousness, so if anything, MTV contributed to the decline of his career rather than the advancement of it.

Hell yeah!

I believe. MTV wasn't what turned me onto Prince, as I am sure was the same with alot of people.

HalluRain said:

I heard Prince say "If I don't perform at their award shows, I can't get a video on MTV." I know Prince has had meetings with MTV about promoting his stuff and one VJ was talking about his "coolest moment" was coming off the elevator (at MTV headquarters) and bumping into Prince. I also know Mayte and Londell had a meeting with MTV around Emancipation time. Then during the Musicology acoustic set Prince said something like "Judy,see how great real singing is" or "this isn't lip-syncing Judy" (something like that) when he was at Madison square garden. I guess Judy is someone from MTV...per the artical I was reading.

Of course he'd b successful!

I think that his career would have taken a whole different direction had it not been for MTV. MTV was very huge in promoting Purple Rain (moreso than radio in some markets) and Purple Rain is what catapulted him to A-list status, where he's been ever since. Had it not been for MTV and their tireless promotion before and during the peak of the album (even running the Take Me With U/I Would Die 4 U concert clips as soon as the tour started), Purple Rain may have gone the way of that Rick Springfield movie that I can't remember the title of in terms of popularity, box office gross, and endurement. Without the massive success of Purple Rain, I don't think Prince would have ventured so soon into the "unknown" with Around the World and Parade. I think that he would have gone back to the 1999 formula until he could eventually make the kind of music that he prefers to make.

And that's my 2 cents, dammit!

CoolMF said:

I feel the same. Once you have success and money you tend to do or venture in to/with the unknown. Look between '78 and '84 there was growth but he pretty much stayed with the same format because you need to stay with what's working if you don't want to move back in if your mama.

MTV may have been the mainstream but I seem to remember watching a lot more BET for Prince and related artists than MTV.

Either way, the answer is yes - he still would have been successful.

PrinceOscar said:

In the early years?

HalluRain said:

I'm sure he also would have been succesfull without MTV,there is still something called radio,something people hear all through the day!!
Maybe PR needed some publicity but in Europe we got 2 know the music first!!be4 we knew there was a movie!!!
But it's always a good thing if MTV plays your vid's,in the early 90's there were several Prince-weekends and I'm sure it helped make D&P a succes.
People who weren't a fan watched those shows.
If MTV did a weekend about some artist,it ment he was a big star..at least a lot of people thought that way.

I also think the reason MTV was so important was because it gave "cross over" attention. He would have been successful with us but he needed "cross over" or the white kids to buy his music also. So...would he be has huge and over the world without MTV NO but would he have success without MTV yes. Every artist from rap to R&b to rock to sports needs everybody to like their music or their art for it to be a hit. Look at Jordan ...he is that big because everybody loves him (when I say everybody I mean all races). Look at Iverson...when he first came out white america was trippin' over his hair and tats but once 14 year old white kids started to where corn rolls at was all good...he became a superstar. To have the "success" I think your talking about you need to cross over but to be succesful he would have be fine without MTV.

JMO

prime said:

I agree. It's important for all different kinds of people if you want to have a hit. I mean look at some of the stellar artists of all time, the beatles, hendrix, clapton, even mj and madonna just to name a few. they all had multi-racial fanbases. Shit i see more white ppl at Mj's concerts than i do black ppl....It's also important to be relative to the majority of the ppl who buy albums who happened to be young ppl! and what kind of shows do they watch? MTV. Would prince have been successful? yea. But would the millions of mainstream teens and young adults who watch MTV and such and are usually the biggest group of album buyers in a generation have made Purple Rain the OVER THE TOP success it was is arguable....

Yes he would've been successful-his talent would have been noticed without MTV .