Forgotten Television Shows: Volume Nine

The The / Dinosaur Jr. / Rollins Band / The Cure / Beastie Boys / XTC / 10,000 Maniacs / Iggy Pop / Catherine Wheel / Belly / Nine Inch Nails / Mudhoney / Sloan / Red Hot Chili Peppers / L7 / Sugar / Therapy? / R.E.M. / Soul Asylum / Wool

If those names make you go, “Oh my God, they were so awesome!” I don’t even have to name the show. The only thing in college that could make you look forward to Sunday nights. The greatest two hours in the history of MTV, simply titled “120 Minutes”

(For those wondering, those bands made up the playlist on 1/31/1993 so if you want to know what I was listening to ten years ago that was it. Belly was super cool (man did I have a crush on Tanya Donnelly))

It was a concept so simple that I am amazed that MTV was actually able to come up with it. Fill up two hours late on a Sunday night with “low rotation” videos. Translation: let’s show the videos for all of the songs on college radio. From a financial standpoint it really didn’t matter, no one really watches television late on Sunday nights. This is why the networks use that time for MASH reruns and George Michael’s Sports Machine (a topic in its own right). There’s no market out there on a Sunday night. Other than college kids…

And that was the beauty of it. It was like for two hours MTV wasn’t selling you the latest product. You had a host (in my time the vaguely British Dave Kendall segueing to the Uncle Fester-esque Matt Pinfield) who sat around an empty studio and basically went “You don’t know these guys but you should.” You wouldn’t always get the music but there was always some level of satisfaction that you actually saw a Shonen Knife video.

I think what really made the show memorable was the fact that it was the ultimate college show. It’s eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, you finally are tackling the assignment that you put off all weekend, you need something playing in the background and 120 Minutes is it. Or you just want to keep fighting off the end of the weekend and want just one moment, just one last chance to be young and energetic and full of life before you have to spend the next several days solving Maxwell’s equations over and over again. (Ok, maybe that last one was just me.) The thing is, never before or since have I known that at a certain time and place I could turn the channel and be assured of seeing the music I like and that is a powerful thing.

120 Minutes died a slow and painful death on MTV where they ended up showing Sum 41 videos for no apparent reason. They sent it over to MTV2 where they started showing real videos again but it met its end there, alone and forgotten. There are still some embers left (VH-1 Classic’s “The Alternative” is close at times) but those thrills from those Sunday nights are gone. If anything, the closest thing to a successor is Adult Swim on Cartoon Network, which is irreverent and hip but also has its own marketing plan.

I know that when I talk about something like 120 Minutes I am not always yearning for a television show. What I really want back is that ability to be hanging out in a dorm room or an apartment on Sunday night with a lot of people and just enjoying life until the last possible moment. But somehow I’ll always believe that if 120 Minutes was back on the air all the rest would just fall into place.

Have a good weekend everyone. Go Bears.