The 90s is officially making a comeback on cable TV. Nearly nine years after Total Request Live (TRL) wrapped up its decade-long run, MTV president, Chris McCarthy announced that the network is set to reboot the show this fall.
While the music scene has definitely changed since TRL’s glory days, the show will still follow its original format and return to its famed live studio in Times Square. “If we’re going to come back and reinvent MTV, the studio is a given,” McCarthy told The New York Times. “It is the centerpiece.”
TRL previously ran from 1998 to 2008 on the music network. The show incorporated a number of different elements, including a countdown of the 10 most popular music videos in the country, interviews, and live performances from top artists in pop, hip-hop, and rock. Past guests included: Destiny’s Child, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, and more.
In the past five years, MTV has undergone some serious adjustments to its programming, with the network’s pledge to focus more on music and video content that aligns with its core, millennial demographic. In the past couple of years, the company has started to witness growth in its ratings, which could be attributed to the reboots of shows like Fear Factor, or original reality shows, like Siesta Key, which adopts the same format at Laguna Beach. “MTV at its best — whether it’s news, whether it’s a show, whether it’s a docu-series — is about amplifying young people’s voices,” McCarthy said. “We put young people on the screen, and we let the world hear their voices. We shouldn’t be writing 6,000-word articles on telling people how to feel.”
Like many other revivals, it will definitely be nostalgic for 90s babies to see the rebirth of TRL. An official air date has not been announced, but we’ll just have to wait and see if it will really be worth all the hype.