[MUSIC- Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or On-demand, I'm really grateful you're here.

On today's show, we got an hour of Sports Docs next hour. We'll speak with two people behind the film, It Ain't Over, which makes the case that Yogi Berra was one of the all-time great ball players and a gifted athlete. One of those people happens to be his granddaughter. She'll be in studio. And we'll talk about the history of the WNBA and the New York Liberty with director Alison Clayman. Plus we'll take your calls.

We're starting this hour a little bit in an unusual way. We actually at one point thought we would be doing a Mother's Day segment, and then this news came that MTV News was shutting down and we went back and forth about whether to do a segment. I went back and forth because I didn't want to have a case of the IEMs, obviously, that's where I got my start in journalism.

Then over the past few days, there's been this incredible outpouring of appreciation and sentiment. People have sent me messages from all over. "My MTV News shaped my consciousness. Thanks for that. I'm heartened to know your reporting lives on." "Saw you in the MTV News, Tupac doc. Sad to see it go. It was such an iconic part of all of our lives." Someone else wrote to me. "I'm a journalist today because of MTV News. You all inspired people. You informed people and educated them." It went on and on like that.

We decided to do a segment saying goodbye to MTV News, but I realized I really couldn't take part in the preparation for this segment, so I haven't seen the copy. [chuckles] I didn't write the questions. We had our music producer, Simon, and two of our seniors who were Gen Xers, one of whom worked at MTV News. Look over everything and I know we have two guests. One's in route, one I can see on Zoom. Let's send this up a flagpole and see who salutes.

[music]

Okay, I've never read this before. This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, or should I say.

Speaker 5: MTV News, you hear it first.

Alison Stewart: On Tuesday this week, Paramount Global, the conglomerate of Paramount Pictures, CBS, and other media networks announced it would be cutting 25% of its staff and in the process, shutting down the MTV News unit, 36 years after it was launched. The announcement had special significance for All Of It team because that's where I got my start.

Now I want to take a moment to mention this was written by my producing staff. Oh, I said this already. Okay, that's fine. This is well done. One former MTV writer-producer, one Gen X senior producer, and one millennial Gen Z cusper.

MTV News launched out of Kurt Loder's The Weekend Rock Program in 1987. It went on to become a vital source of reporting on music, culture, and politics for a generation of young viewers looking for a newsroom made by and for them. People like Lin-Manuel Miranda who even told us so when he was a guest on this show.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hi, Alison. Been a big fan since MTV News. I'm thrilled to be here.

Alison Stewart: The network broke news on major moments and cultural and musical history like the death of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, and the MTV News team broadcasted from both Woodstocks in the 1990s. We covered political campaigns and elections. Our choose or lose coverage of the 1992 presidential election earned a Peabody and the slogan stuck for the next two decades of MTV campaign coverage. It also famously led to this exchange between President Bill Clinton and a young voter.

Voter: Mr. President. The world's dying to know, is it boxers or briefs?

[laughter]

[applause]

President Bill Clinton: Usually briefs. [laughter] I can't believe she did that.

Alison Stewart: That's a clip I hate and I will tell you why in just a minute. We covered a lot of stories on MTV, and luckily, one of my producers were able to find some of them online. Oh no.

We are here at Saugerties, New York, but Woodstock '94 is just about to kick off. Before the concert can start, they have to get all the people inside. Unlike the original concert where people walked in or trampled their way in, there is a semi-orderly process which is just about to begin.

Speaker 3: Welcome to Woodstock Two. Welcome to Woodstock.

Alison Stewart: Oh yes, I remember that doing that. There's this one.

Chris, I'm surrounded by Blowfish. I don't really know how this happened. I'm here with my good close personal friends, Hootie and the Blowfish. Now we know that there's nobody in the band named Hootie, but who do people come up and decide is Hootie?

Band member: Darius.

Darius: I'm not Hootie, though.

Alison Stewart: I was witty even back then. How about this one?

MTV News has me out here in 10-degree weather in search of a six-foot-five drag queen in a white limo. I think I found her.

RuPaul: Hey girl, come on in here. Let's go. Let's go shopping. I'm ready. Come on shopping. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Who wouldn't want to go shopping with RuPaul at a New Jersey mall? I tell you. John Norris was one of my co-anchors at MTV News Days. He's recently written for GQ Esquire Billboard Under the Radar, and other outlets. He is a phenomenal writer, by the way. Hi, John.

John Norris: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: I am so happy to see you. MTV News's closure comes after a series of layoffs and shutters in the world of media and news. Just in the past few weeks, Bud Buzzfeed announced on April 20th that it would be shutting down its news division. A week later, Vice Media said it would lay off hundreds of employees and close its Vice World News Board. For some context, we're joined by Eric Deggans, TV and Media Critic and Analyst for NPR. Eric, nice to see you.

Eric Deggans: Yes, nice to see you.

Alison Stewart: All right, listeners, we want to hear from you. Were you part of the MTV generation? What stories, interviews, or other moments have stuck with you? When did you watch MTV News and why did you watch MTV News? What are you thinking and feeling with the announcement of the end of MTV News? Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can reach out on social media @AllOfItWNYC.

John, I don't know if you heard in the beginning, I have never seen this copy before. [laughs] We had two producers prepare it because I didn't feel like I should. I just wanted to this to be fresh and not from my recollections. John, here's a question for you. [laughs] How did you respond when you first saw the news from Tuesday?

John Norris: Well, full disclosure, I was sitting- I'm a huge soccer fan, and I was sitting in a football soccer bar watching a RealMadrid game. I got a DM from an editor of The Hollywood Reporter saying, "Hey, did you hear the news about MTV News shutting down?" I was like, "Absolutely not. I did not hear that." He said, "Would you like to comment?" I said, "Maybe at halftime."

[laughter]

Eric Deggans: That's a fan.

[laughter]

John Norris: Thank you. I had to collect my thoughts, and it's a lot. It was so nice to see what you, Alison and everyone else had to say, in their oral history they ran yesterday. I thought there was a lot of really nice recollections and, man, it's a lot. I don't know whether to talk about what happened and why I think maybe it happened, or just talk about our time there and what it meant to us. I'd be curious what Eric has to say about why it happened because I have my own feelings that it didn't have to necessarily happen in the way that it did, but maybe I'm delusional about that.

Alison Stewart: No, you're a good journalist. You want to know. You just asked my question for me. Eric. [laughter]

Eric Deggans: Right.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: What was your reaction when you heard? No you're going to get double-teamed here, Eric?

[laughter]

Eric Deggans: Man, yes. No, not at all. Man. Well, I wonder if I should be honest about my actual reaction because I don't want to be insulting the people who work there, but part of me was like, I didn't realize it still existed.

I think the cable TV news industry is shrinking rapidly, right? If you watch MTV, what you see is hours and arrows of ridiculousness, right? I'm talking about the actual TV show. They keep playing it for hours. MTV is not-- the MTV of today is not the MTV of the days when you guys worked for MTV News. It doesn't have a lot of groundbreaking programming anymore. It's reflecting the general state of cable TV news which is having a hard time because young people don't watch linear television anymore.

Even middle-aged people don't watch linear television anymore, but young people especially, so if you're a youth-focused channel like MTV was, and young people are on TikTok and Instagram and Discord and all these other social media platforms, it's hard for MTV to justify its existence, let alone MTV News.

Ultimately, I think that's what happened the cable business shrunk to the point where it didn't make sense for Viacom, or Paramount Global rather, to keep MTV News going. Something like that.

Also, I think what happened was MTV News, I have this weird relationship to it because I was a fan who watched it, and then I became a pop music critic for the Asbury Park Press, and I covered stories alongside you guys. I was at Woodstock '94. I was at the MTV Video Music Awards when Michael Jackson kissed Lisa Marie. When the Foo Fighters first played their first show in New York, Kurt Loder was standing right next to me. [laughter] I wasn't being a fan to covering stuff right along beside you guys. It was a major platform that recognize that the stuff that music fans cared about and that young people cared about was serious news. That was a big deal at that time, but now it isn't. Everyone does.

NPR, you know, Alison, we cover Beyoncé, we cover youth story and movements much more than NPR ever would when MTV News was established. I think part of it was the cable team news industry collapsed, and part of it is that every other media source began doing what MTV News pioneered.

Alison Stewart: John, I'm going to take some calls in just a minute. When you try to explain to someone who wasn't around at the time, what MTV News meant to people at the time, in the late '80s, in the '90s. How do you explain it?

John Norris: I do actually encounter that situation from time to time because I meet a lot of people who are 20, 21 years old and don't remember it. The main and most important thing is to say, first of all, imagine a world where you didn't have Twitch and TikTok, and YouTube for that matter, and all these platforms that I have mentioned, and yet there was still a desire on the part of young people to connect, to connect over music, and to connect over pop culture. Then, I think, Alison, to our credit, as we went on, on social issues and on politics, so we were a place that people tuned to.

Over time, throughout the '90s, and certainly on end of the 2000s, I think there was a diminishing-- First we grew and grew, and I felt like we reached a level of respectability, at least among young people. I left at the end of 2008, and I sensed that there was, around that time or maybe five years later, it just felt to me, like the channel gave up on what news had been built into.

My answer to your question is, just to imagine a place, a one-stop shop for the things that mattered to you. Whether that was The Weekend Rock, it's success or MTV News 1515, our weekly shows.

Of course, early on, there was the 10 to the hour news, but they did away with that eventually too. Then we had all kinds of, there was Choose or Lose, of course. We were on every presidential campaign from '92 on, and Tabitha's famous forum with Bill Clinton. It was a lot.

I hear from people of that generation, how much it meant to them. In my alternate universe mind, I think, why couldn't they have doubled down? I think what Eric said is right. The slow fade to black of MTV News went hand-in-hand with what MTV as a channel became. Had they stayed committed to MTV News as a brand, a brand that I thought was an honorable brand at a certain time, I wonder what, in my imagination, what could an MTV News today be? It could have been a place where we could, on a regular basis, be talking about guns, which have certainly not faded. If anything, it's even more of an issue.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to dive in. To your point about the guns, and I said it when they played the clip about boxers and briefs, I hate that clip, because that clip came during a 90-minute forum about gun violence, or Enough is Enough campaigin. Throughout that, there were people who would have lost family members. We had a really serious discussion, and this cute little blonde chic gets up and says that. That was what the mainstream media reported on, which is also something else I learned at MTV News, is to question the mainstream media.

We were on the campaign trail. I would see something happen, and we wouldn't file our story, or you would file your story, and then I'd watch the networks, and they had a whole different story. I'm like, "That's not what I saw happened." When I was at the violence forum discussing gun violence and kids, to me, that boxers and briefs was 14 seconds of 90 minutes.

John Norris: Exactly, and a reflection of, I think, a tendency and inclination, at least early on, to reduce this to something trivial. As you say, it was one moment. I think about where we are today, when you think about a town hall, a certain town hall that a network did two nights ago.

Alison Stewart: Read Eric's coverage by that, by the way. Our phone lines are full. Let's roll some calls and talk to David from Tuckahoe. Hi, David. Thanks for calling in.

David: Hi. Thank you for having me. I just wanted to bring out my point of, back in 2005, I had to be maybe 10, 11 years old, and I'll never forget Kanye West on MTV News with Mike Myers, and he said, "George Bush does not care about Black people." This is during the Hurricane Katrina that happened. I thought that was just a crazy scene of events that just occurred right on national television. I couldn't believe it.

Alison Stewart: That was the beauty of, anything could happen. That was the part that--

John Norris: That was back when Yel was relatively presine and was talking sense.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to someone we know, John. Linda is calling from Woodstock. Hi, Linda?

Linda: Hey, Ali. Hi, John. It's Linda Corradina. How are you guys?

John Norris: How are you?

Linda: It's been crazy, all the people pouring out to say how much MTV News influenced them. It's really an honor to have been there in the beginning and work with you guys. I think I hired you guys.

Alison Stewart: As I said, Linda was the vice president of news of MTV News.

Linda: Yes. I started as a news producer and then became a news director back when John, you were there. I think I was a producer when you were a writer, or maybe I was already the news director.

John Norris: I'd been an intern, and then I got a job as a writer in the news department. Honestly, if it weren't for Linda and Dave Sirulnick, and Judy actually was the one who originally brought me in as an intern, Judy McGrath. So many people I have to thank for having that long, long life there.

Linda: It was such a fun time. I was telling someone the other day, I think I've put it on Facebook, just that it was like grad school. We were working with our friends, and if someone had a good idea, we were like, "Let's do it." There was so much freedom.

I want to correct one thing. I think John, you mentioned it, but The Weekend Rock didn't start after Live Aid. The Weekend Rock started as a weekly news segment that we would crash together on a Friday night and get it on right away. We'd edit at unit.

Now I was a producer. We'd take clips from all the shoots we did that week, and we'd boarder for news footage from local affiliates because before I got to MTV, I worked on the desk at ABC News, so I knew who to call, the ABC affiliate in St. Louis and say, "Hey, there was violence at a who concert last night or whatever," and then I'd send them four T-shirts in payment so we get the footage, and we press together a piece because we had no money. People were happy to get their T-shirts.

That's where we started to do more timely stuff. Then after Live Aid is when, and much of the year that we hired Kurt. We just felt like it was time for MTV News to have its own presence because the news, we were working really hard, and it seemed to get lost at the top of the hour. It wasn't being recognized enough.

Also, by bringing Kurt over from Rolling Stone, we were starting to land the big interviews. We could interview Springsteen, we could interview the Stones. Unfortunately, the VJs were upset about that. I still apologize to Mark Goodman, because he really could do a great interview as the rest of them could, it's just we ended up sucking the big names away from the VJs, unfortunately, but, yes, it was awesome.

Alison Stewart: Linda, thank you. One, thank you for hiring us. That's first of all.

John Norris: Exactly. Even to this day, I meet people who conflate the VJs with the news department and some people might recognize me and say, "Oh, you're the old MTV VJ." Sometimes I'm like, "Yes, I am," because the idea of correcting them all these years later is-- You know, Linda, it was making a distinction between, back then, MTV News and what the VJs were doing was-- It was a little bit of a learning curve for people, I think.

Alison Stewart: Eric, I want to bring you into the conversation, something I feel very grateful that Linda and Dave hired me at that time because there weren't news reporters in mainstream news who looked like me at all, who wore their hair in a natural way or who weighed more than a buck 10.

When I think about that I owe a lot of my career to a place that not only accepted who you are, they accepted what you looked like and that was okay. I think when you think about the landscape of who is an acceptable news anchor, I think MTV was really at the forefront on this. I'd love to get your comment on that.

Eric Deggans: Well, so one of the things that struck me, it's going to sound like I'm making up stories, but I'm really not, when I was in college, I was in a band that was signed to Motown and I was, a recording artist and I was playing a lot of clubs and MTV News and MTV were on video walls in clubs because you guys were talking about the stuff that we cared about at the time.

I remember the Live Aid coverage at clubs actually centered events around it, and they put it up on a big screen, and then we played during the commercial breaks and stuff like that. It was a big deal.

There was always this tension, I think, at MTV between recognizing diversity and the desire for artists of color to be recognized. That was one of the things as somebody who was signed to Motown and was hoping to be a success in the music industry, we were wondering, how is MTV going to treat people who look like us? It was inspirational to see someone like Alison pop up and say, "Oh my God, they are willing to hire a person of color to cover news and to show that they're going to have some diversity," because we were taking our cues from listening to what you were saying about the industry, and what you were saying the trends were, and what you were saying was hot, and what the big artists were telling you about what they were doing.

It was our way of connecting with the industry and figuring out what we were going to do with our careers. That kind of diversity was really important. Frankly, I wish MTV had done more of it at that time, but whatever was done was most appreciated.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the end of MTV News. My guests are journalist John Norris, former correspondent and anchor for MTV News, as well as Eric Deggans, NPR's TV critic and media analyst, and we've just discovered former-- well, you're never a former musician, you are a musician.

Our phone number is 212-433-9692 212-433 WNYC. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Were you part of the MTV generation? What stories, interviews and other moments have stuck with you? Did you watch MTV News? What memories do you have? 212-433-9692 212-433 WNYC. We'll take more of your calls and we'll share some tweets and Instagram, DMS and more clips after a quick break.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are journalist John Norris. He is a former MTV News anchor and correspondent. Eric Deggans, my colleague from NPR. He's a TV critic and media analyst. We are talking about the end of MTV News. We're taking some calls. Let's talk to Matthew from Great Neck. Hey, Matthew.

Matthew: Hi. I was just telling your screener, I'm an older guy. I grew up watching MTV in the '80s. I certainly remember when it started. I think the thing that was so interesting about MTV News was that it really tried to engage young people, probably like no other media at the time. John mentioned the Choose or Lose and certainly with the Clinton election and so on. I don't know if it was successful. It seemed like, sadly, that the youth vote never came out. Certainly MTV and MTV News, I thought really tried very hard to engage young people, like I said, like no one else had.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Jenny from Brooklyn. Hey, Jenny, thanks for calling All Of It.

Jenny 1: Hi. Thanks. First, I wanted to say that it was so important to me to see a young woman of color like you on the news. My only role model was Connie Chung, you probably saw that thing in The New York Times, so that was great. I was a freshman at Berkeley in 1994 when MTV News filmed a Smart Sex. It was actually, I think, filmed in my dorm and a bunch of my dorm mates were in the show.

It was important because it was the only time or the first time I had seen anything talk about what was actually going on with young people and their sexual lives and talking about it really, honestly. To your point earlier, when it showed up in the local news, it just showed one of my dorm mates waving around a sex toy.

Alison Stewart: Jenny, thank you for calling in. We have another Jenny calling from Manhattan. Hey, Jenny from Manhattan.

Jenny 2: Hey, Alison, How are you doing? I'm a Gen Xer. MTV came on the scene in 1981. I was 11 years old and quite frankly, we never turned off MTV once it came on. It was on in our house on the TV all the time.

There's two things that stick out from the MTV days. First of all, Alison, I remember you did an interview of Bono, the lead singer of U2, and this giant smile came across his face because his wife's name is Alison Stewart. Her maiden name is Alison Stewart. That just stuck out in my mind how excited he was to meet you and that you had the same name.

The other thing is, I was lucky enough to go to Live Aid in Philadelphia when I was 15 in 1985 and how MTV covered that was just really spectacular. The final thing is Rock the Vote. I think that was really-- it was just really-- just such a great format. It formed my life and exposed me to all music that I might not have heard of. I really appreciate it, everything that MTV did.

Alison Stewart: Jenny, thank you for the kind words. John when you think back on big interviews that you've done, what are one or two that stick out in your brain?

John Norris: Things that stick out in my mind are trips and events that I thought I would never get to experience in my life. There was one of the first big, I think the first big trip I ever took was the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley in 1992, which anyone who knows what that was, it was just absolutely star-studded, every big name you could imagine. You look back at footage of that, some of which is still now on YouTube. I look at it and I look at David Bowie and Annie Lennox doing Under Pressure and I'm like, "I can't believe I was there. I was there in the pit watching."

I'd really been on camera maybe two years at that point. That's one that sticks out in my mind. Obviously, one that everyone mentions is when Kurt Cobain died, Kurt Loder took the lead on that news and we stayed on the air for hours with that. I was a number two to Kurt in that. That certainly sticks with me. I got to go to Haiti with the Fugees in '97 for like a homecoming show and to go to that hard luck nation and see what it meant to them, to see them back there playing this massive show on the waterfront in Haiti. In 2005, I went to Cuba. I never thought I'd go to Cuba. I went with Audioslave, Tom Morello and the late Chris Cornell.

Then things that were not music related. I got to be on the steps of a courthouse in Cambridge, Mass, in the early 2000s watching same sex couples get marriage licenses. Something I never imagined 10 years prior that I would ever see in my lifetime. There's so many. There's so many. There's a lot of death obviously, I was in LA the night that Biggie got shot. I was had to be there at the hospital doing sitting vigil on that. There was Aaliyah's passing. There's a lot.

First ever interview with Britney Spears at her house, her family home in Kentwood, Louisiana, surrounded by her doll collection, which I hope that doesn't sound creepy.

Alison Stewart: Oh, it does.

John Norris: It does [unintelligible 00:28:26] okay.

Alison Stewart: I think that's appropriate, though. [laughter]

John Norris: So many things.

Alison Stewart: Eric, I've been asked this a couple of times and I'm really curious what you would think is people have asked me, is there anything out there now that has the same energy or the same ethos of MTV News? I have a thought, but I want to hear yours.

Eric Deggans: I would have said BuzzFeed and Vice.

Alison Stewart: Right.

Eric Deggans: Not anymore. Again, I do think that that energy has been dispersed throughout the media landscape. If anything, I guess I would say we see it in podcasting. There's a lot of really cool podcasts out there that young people are doing that are bringing together the factual storytelling of journalism and the pop culture knowledge. Sam Sanders left us to go to Vulture, left NPR to go to Vulture, to create a podcast that does exactly that. He's an amazing journalist who covered politics with us before he started hosting It's Been a Minute. Now he has a podcast with the people over at Vulture where he's bringing all those things together.

There's a lot of exciting young people who are doing that in the podcasting space. To me, I think that might be the surest space where you can find this kind of stuff happening.

Alison Stewart: My response to that was podcasting and specifically Crooked Media. I think Crooked Media has really picked up the authenticity and the way people actually talk about politics, instead of in the formal format of the Sunday morning big five. When I think about also their extensions that they extend, they have trans anchors and hosts, they have a whole show based around women called Hysteria. I just find that the ethos reminds me a little bit of what it was like in early--

Eric Deggans: The other thing that's interesting to me is that artists are starting to fill that space themselves. It used to be it would take somebody like you, Alison, or you

John, to have an interview with Al Bano or Bruce to tell their story. Now they're doing it themselves.

Taylor Swift is executive producing a documentary for Netflix about herself, and telling her story the way she wants to. That's something else that is some of that energy is that these artists have decided, I'm not going to do an extended interview with an outside journalist, I'm just going to hire the people to tell my story the way I think it should be told, and that's what you'll get.

John Norris: Eric, I wonder if that's necessarily a win in that, as you say, it's the artist then controlling the message. To the extent that whether it's Beyonce or Taylor or whoever, Janet I believe executive produced the recent doc on her a couple of years ago. You're going to get what you get by something that is overseen by the artists themselves, right?

Eric Deggans: Yes. Even in those like I just reviewed Still which is the Michael J. Fox movie. What's interesting about that is that you get a really intimate look at what it's like for him living with Parkinson's, but you want him to participate in the film, and you want him to participate in the publicity for the film when it comes out. That's going to be in the back of your head when you're editing it together. Even when these artists aren't necessarily in control of the content, some of the directors of these docu-series swear to me that they have final cut. You want the celebrities to support it when it comes out so that pressure is still in the back of your head.

When you guys were interviewing these people, you wanted to continue access to Bruce, you wanted to continue to access to Bono, so you have that kind of

pressure too. It's just a little different when the star is the executive producer of the thing too.

Alison Stewart: I call those things docu memoirs because they're not really documentaries. [laughter] Let's take some calls. Ray from Freehold New Jersey has been holding. Hi, Ray. Thanks for holding. You're on the air.

Ray: Hi, Alison. Thanks so much for taking my call. Big fan here. Just a little curiosity for you guys from a different perspective. I was born and raised in Brazil. In the '90s that's when MTV started in Brazil. Obviously, we knew about the American MTV, the regional MTV but there was an MTV Brazil I think '96 or something like that.

I remember everybody said this is going to kill Brazilian music, especially Brazillian rock because everything's going to be listening to from now on is really sure in American rock, but it did just the opposite. It promoted Brazilian music, especially Brazilian rock in such a way that the '90s are considered the best rock decade in Brazil because of MTV. I thought that will be interesting curiosity for the listeners.

Alison Stewart: Yes, I like the perspective. Thanks, Ray. Let's talk to Cynthia from Manhattan. Hi, Cynthia. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Cynthia: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm a Gen Xer and the very first stuff that I remember watching with MTV News is the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was 1991, I think. I was a pre-teen and I remember seeing it in other news channels or in life but MTV News really put it into perspective for me. Then I also really remember the Rocks of Vote campaign. I used to love that.

I graduated high school when I was 17 because I'm one of those cusper birthday people, and I couldn't wait to turn 18 just so I could vote. I registered because there was a law, whatever, where you can register when you're 17 blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I was so excited and that was all because of MTV News. Thank you so much for politicizing me, and congratulations on all your accomplishments.

Alison Stewart: Cynthia, thank you so much for calling in. We've got Dave calling in from Toms River, New Jersey. Hi, Dave.

Dave: Hey, how are you, Alison?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

Dave: Thanks for taking my call. One of the callers talked about when MTV first started. I remember my sisters were about 12 years old. We were sitting down in front of the old TV that was the size of a dresser and I remember when it aired. I think it was one of two videos. I remember the astronauts planting the flag on the moon, and then I remember either it was Fish Heads or was Video Killed the Radio Star but whatever it was, I knew right from then I was hooked at MTV, MTV News, 120 Minutes, Headbangers Ball. It really was formative to my life. I'm a musician. It opened me up to all sorts of different types of music, all different types of cultures.

MTV was definitely a formative period. I'm a Gen Xer too, so I'm really glad that I had that exposure to it. I haven't watched it in years, because I don't even have a TV but it was definitely a huge part of my childhood. I remember just the shared experience with my older sisters because they were huge music fans, still are. That was just like a shared experience that we had in our childhood. I remember John Norris and self admittedly a huge crush on Kennedy. I know she was one of those, right? Kennedy I was like, oh my gosh.

Alison Stewart: I love that Dave. Dave [unintelligible 00:36:09] clearly at the time. [laughter]

John Norris: Fox Business [unintelligible 00:36:15] sing Miss Kennedy Montgomery these days.

Alison Stewart: Yes. It's so interesting, John, where people ended up.

John Norris: Exactly. I'm the one who didn't get the memo that when you reach a certain age, Alison, you're supposed to stop writing about music, and young musicians. What's the word for doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Eric Deggans: Insanity, I believe.

John Norris: I believe that's it. Here we are.

Alison Stewart: Peeling the curtain back a little bit, picking up something Eric said, John, when was a moment-- I can remember the moment when we did butt up against that idea of what the record company, what the artist wants, and trying to maintain journalistic standards? I will say I think all of us were very sincere in our dedication to the rules and the [unintelligible 00:37:4] around journalism.

John Norris: I don't remember too many instances where there was a difficult issue involving an artist that I was sitting down with, the kind of issue that we might identify nowadays.

Nowadays, it's such a different time and the way that we have to reckon with the things people do and say so much more quickly because of social media. I don't remember of any instances where I was asked to not talk about something. I do think that if I was today to sit down with a big star, it's entirely possible I might be asked to not go a certain place.

Back then I think it would be a lot harder for that because I think they needed us in a sense and I think that need has lessened over time. I don't know. How about you? Were there times when you felt you couldn't?

Alison Stewart: I remember when I did a special making of Scream, the Michael Jackson video, and we were allowed on set but we had to put the cameras down when he wanted us to. Michael was very, very specific about when the cameras could roll.

John Norris: That's interesting you mentioned Michael. I thank you for jogging my memory. I was on the set of the video for In the Closet out in the desert by the Salton Sea with Naomi Campbell and [unintelligible 00:38:39] and Michael, and he didn't want to do any interviews. We could shoot B-roll but no interviews. I was like, why am I here? I ended up in a-- I'm not kidding. At the after party after they wrapped the video shoot I should even say this in a conga line with Naomi Campbell and Michael Jackson. [laughter] That's just the kind of hot and serious journalist I was.

John Norris: That's awesome.

Alison Stewart: I got one minute left. Dive in, Eric.

Eric Deggans: I was going to say one thing we didn't talk about was how the music industry has also fallen off a cliff and it's also hurt MTV and MTV News with the reduced influence of record companies and the big record industry and the atomization of the recording industry that also made it harder for MTV to dominate the culture the way it had in the past.

Alison Stewart: This was a tremendous amount of fun. I really enjoyed going down memory lane with you John Norris. Eric Deggans, I learned some things about you today.

Eric Deggans: You sure did.

Alison Stewart: Thank you.

Eric Deggans: I only answered several trivia questions.

Alison Stewart: Thanks to everybody who called in, even folks we couldn't get on the air, and folks who tweeted. John Norris, thanks for everything you've done, and thanks for doing this today.

John Norris: Yes, I hope to see you again sooner rather than later, Alison. Take care.

Alison Stewart: I'm up for that.

John Norris: Proud of you.

Alison Stewart: Proud of you too. Eric, thank you so much.

Eric Deggans: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It.

 

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