MTV's Total Request Live turned 10 this month, and its last episode will air in November in a special Saturday two-hour edition. Awwwww. Granted, I haven't watched the show in about eight years, but awwwwww.
So did YouTube kill the video star? The Carson Daly-hosted TRL pretty much came along at the right time in 1998 to kickstart the whole teen pop craze—Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, NSync.But in recent years, especially after Daly left the show in 2003, what had once been a Top 10 video countdown program had been reduced to showing 20-second clips of videos while some kids screamed into a microphone or some actor or rapper promoted their latest project.
Or was it always like that? Christ, I'm old...
TRL's executive producer Dave Sirulnick says the show isn't ending for good:
"We want to close this era of TRL in a big celebratory way, and 10 is a great number. And 10 is the number that TRL counted down every single day for 10 years, and we hit this 10th (anniversary) and we thought, You know what? This feels like the right time and let's celebrate it and let's reward it. And let's let it have a little bit of a rest for a minute. Let it catch its breath! Been working hard — for 10 years!"MTV will replace the show with the similar, Pete Wentz-hosted FNMTV, which aired for 15 episodes in the summer and returns this fall.