They were Brandons and Andreas to our Davids and Donnas, and I hope they know that’s as high a compliment as a person can give. They were, whether on-air personalities or producers or writers, committed and intense, yet also hip and extremely good-looking. Watching the MTV News department from up close for as long as I did, I can only make this comparison: It felt like the West Beverly Blaze, the high school newspaper in the early seasons of “Beverly Hills, 90210.” In the midst of a world that seemed frivolous, MTV News staffers were devoted to doing work that had depth. Kurt is still so tied to the identity of MTV News, even now, years after he left the network, that I have to remind myself that I’m not writing his obituary. He was mischievous enough not to keep Courtney Love from crashing his post-MTV Video Music Awards conversation with Madonna in 1995, something he absolutely could have shut down but didn’t, thank God. He held it together, smoothly and stoically, in the hours after Kurt Cobain died. As the 1992 elections drew near, the expanding MTV News team asked a question nobody in the history of television had thought to ask: What if a presidential election could be made interesting and relevant to a citizen under age 50? “Choose or Lose” was born, Bill Clinton was asked whether he wore boxers or briefs, and not long after, there was an MTV inaugural ball.Īfter the election, Soren became a TV star in her own right, but in many ways, Loder was MTV News, cool and authoritative, a Cronkite for Generation X. Young journalists like Tabitha Soren, John Norris, Chris Connelly and Alison Stewart entered the fold. That year, the 10-to-the-hour segments expanded to “The Week in Rock,” a one-hour show that quickly replaced Rolling Stone as the place where Generation X got its pop-culture news. A persona so unique in the culture that it would have done Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” no good to create a fictionalized version they had no choice but to deep-fake him. He was like a cool professor, an eminence blasé. Loder brought a new, more worldly vibe to the channel. MTV made the correct choice: Kurt Loder, by then a veteran of rock journalism and criticism, a longtime contributor to Rolling Stone, a co-writer with Tina Turner of her autobiography. Someone with a lifetime of wisdom and experience, which is to say: someone in their very early 40s. What was needed was someone with gravitas. But some things were weightier than an Alan Hunter could be expected to handle, and by 1987, the fresh crop of pop stars the network had helped to create wanted to be interviewed more thoughtfully. In the early ’80s on MTV, the VJs had to deliver the music news and do the more in-depth artist interviews. The influential and crowd-pleasing telecast brought pop music culture, news and politics to young audiences - long before the internet and Napster changed media and music in equal measure. Company Town MTV News, which chronicled the music and politics of the ’90s, shuts down
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