MTV Is Reportedly Cancelling TRL Less Than 6 Months After They Brought It Back To Life (Update: Or They Are Expanding It As 3 Different Shows)

TMZ- It really is never as good as the first time — MTV is pulling the plug on its revived version of “Total Request Live” … TMZ has learned. We obtained an email sent to employees informing them the series is being canceled once again. As you might know, TRL was brought back to the network in October, after being off the air for nearly 9 years. According to the message … TRL will not be returning April 9 as it was scheduled to after going on hiatus in February. Instead, the afternoon show will “pivot to short form content that will be featured on social and digital platforms.”

Grand opening, grand closing! I guess Total Request Live doesn’t work as well when most of the world doesn’t give a fuck about music videos anymore. And the people that do care can pull whatever video they want up on their phone in a millisecond. No need to wait through commercial breaks and interviews with some person you never heard of to see where your favorite video landed. To be honest, the only music videos I know of are the ones that are blogged on here every so often.

As somebody that pays the bills thanks to blogging about nostalgic shit coming back in reboot or remake form, this is the fate of most of those things I write about. Old assholes like me get excited that something from their childhood is coming back because it reminds them of when life was a kabillion times easier. Then once it comes back, all of us washed idiots are too busy with real life shit to watch something at 4 PM on a weekday. The middle schoolers and high schoolers that are watching TV don’t care about how N’Sync and Backstreet Boys used to go 12 rounds as their fans would call in to vote. Think about that. People would actually take time out of their day to CALL IN to vote about a music video. How bored were we back then? Those damn millennials we always hear about shouldn’t give a fuck that a band like Korn would occasionally come out of nowhere to steal the Number 1 spot from some pop star as all of Times Square lost its mind or how Carson Daly seemed cool because he wore black nail polish while dating a still Tara Reid a million years ago. Again, I lived through the TRL phenomenon, work from home, and it never crossed my mind to watch the new TRL even once.

So #RIPInPeace to both the OG and new version of TRL. I’m pretty sure you were awesome once upon a time and not just the product of being around when we didn’t have 8 million other entertainment options at our finger tips.

UPDATE:

THR- Total Request Live, MTV’s reboot of the former Carson Daly music and interview show, is not going anywhere. In fact, the Viacom-owned cable network plans to grow the franchise to include three different dayparts. After TMZ posted that MTV was canceling the revived TRL, network president Chris McCarthy (who also oversees VH1 and Logo) spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his plan to expand beyond the current afternoon edition — which, contrary to reports, will return in April as planned — as well as morning and late-night offshoots. All told, a version of TRL will air three times a day on the linear network starting this summer, McCarthy says.

“It’s thriving. We’re expanding the franchise and will have three TRLs by summer,” McCarthy tells THR. (The revival’s October premiere drew just 166,000 live same-day viewers.) “TRL has delivered incredible growth on linear and we’ve experienced two to three times the growth in our video streams and TRL is big piece of it — and that’s why we’re expanding it; we want more.”
MTV has been quietly piloting an on-air late-night version franchise — Total Request Late-Night, which started Feb. 19 — that has been airing twice a week at 11 p.m. and will expand that to four nights a week come summer, McCarthy says. “It’s a top three series at 11 p.m.,” he notes of the evening series, which is up 188 percent among adults 18-34 vs. its previous programming.) The half-hour series is currently fronted by Girl Code breakout Nessa, though it is expected to add other rotating hosts. The late-night version will be part “after-show” targeting some of MTV’s tentpole programs — like Jersey Shore, for example — as well as music, live performances, celebrity guests and more. The series will launch full-time — four nights a week — in the summer and target adults 18-34.

Also in the works for the summer is Total Request A.M., which will be a curated Spotify list of sorts and be a “pure music play,” McCarthy says — without commercials — and feature a more traditional video countdown as well as music performances. A host for the morning version, which will run an hour a day, has not yet been determined. That is likely to launch in the summer. MTV is currently curating both the late-night and morning editions without a showrunner for the time being. The afternoon version of TRL, which launched Oct. 2, will still return April 9 as planned as a two-hour block with its roster of rotating hosts and social media stars serving as correspondents. The series, which will feature music videos, interviews, performances and skits, will shift to focus on a younger demo — 12-24 — when it returns.

Meh, I don’t know if I’m buying all this. Mostly because I wrote an entire blog shoveling dirt on TRL’s corpse. You can technically call every show on MTV “TRL” and say everything is gucci. Plus we all know the old adage. If you have three TRLs, you really have none.