‘1999’: The music video MTV weirdly played for 24 hours straight
Now the premier purveyors of exploitative reality TV dross, it is easy to forget that MTV was once a major power within the music industry, lauded by record company executives for its power to make or break an artist on the strength of their music video output.
MTV was a little ahead of its time when it first emerged in 1981, at which time music video was still a largely unexplored art form. Sure, there were those who had made film accompaniments to their music – the space-age spuds of Devo being one such key example, but your average pop star certainly didn’t spend their precious time creating videos. Within a few short years, though, the channel changed all that, for better or worse.
Suddenly, if you were an artist in search of a hit record, you were duty-bound to create a video accompaniment and to pander to MTV’s every need in the hopes that they would play it. After all, if a song got enough airplay on the television channel, it was bound to enter the singles charts eventually, in the same way that radio play spurred on chart success in the years before MTV came along.
Countless budding young artists tried in vain to have their video shown on MTV, never to find success by the means of the newfangled world of music television. During one 24-hour period in 1999, though, the channel broadcast the same video on a continuous loop for the entire day, which must have stung those who had tried and failed to have their own videos shown.
Specifically, it was MTV’s second channel, M2, who played the video on a loop, seemingly as a means of exercising its apparently wild, free-spirited nature, in comparison to the by-then firmly established MTV. The video in question was one that MTV had adopted all the way back in 1982, when the channel was still in its relative infancy: Prince’s legendary hit, ‘1999’.
Now, I’m sure you can connect the dots yourself, here, but M2 played ‘1999’ for 24 hours on January 1st, 1999, in an effort to usher in the new year while simultaneously paying homage to a classic music video and an undeniably incredible track. If any artist was going to be shoved down the throats of satellite TV viewers, Prince was probably the best bet. After all, being played on a loop for 24 hours doesn’t even register in the top ten of weirdest Prince stories.
What’s more, M2 tended to appeal to a slightly older audience than its MTV counterpart, which had already started to pivot to various reality TV shows and other outputs aside from exclusively music. You can assume, therefore, that the audience tuning into the still relatively niche M2 were more than familiar with ‘1999’, and the channel’s decision to play it on a loop simply reaffirmed the idea that MTV wasn’t like other broadcasters.
In the end, the publicity stunt worked. Not only did the re-release of Prince’s single reach the US top 40 and the top ten in the UK, but M2 quickly became the go-to choice for true music obsessives, as MTV continually moved towards the grasp of reality TV instead.
Ultimately, though, the channel soon went the same way as its brethren, scaling down the musical content in favour of more profitable offerings. Last year, in fact, MTV ceased all music channels in the UK, as a sign of just how far the channel’s music industry power has fallen as the years have marched on. If only they could go back to those heady, care-free days of 1999.
