美国国家公共电台 NPR VH1 Has 3 Secrets For Making Hit TV, And '90s Nostalgia Is One（在线收听）

VH1 Has 3 Secrets For Making Hit TV, And '90s Nostalgia Is One

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0005:30repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: 

The '90s are having a moment right now, from the runway to music to TV, which has long mined nostalgia.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

C+C MUSIC FACTORY: (Singing) Everybody dance now.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: So you think you're a '90s fan? OK, Hannibal Lecter.

SIEGEL: Nostalgia for the '90s is a cornerstone of VH1. It's now the fastest-growing entertainment network on cable TV. It's got three of the top five cable reality shows. And in that prized demographic of 18 to 34-year-olds, it's one of the most watched channels. NPR's Neda Ulaby visited VH1's headquarters in New York to learn how it has captured so many millennial eyeballs.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Today's 30-year-olds might remember the '90s as a dark age - no smartphones or Snapchats or Kardashians - but apparently no.

CHRIS MCCARTHY: I think the younger audience really actually looks to the '90s in a different way.

ULABY: That's VH1 President Chris McCarthy.

MCCARTHY: The '90s were just better, right? Like, the economy was better. There was no war. It's different than any other decade. Like, after 9/11, things just changed.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "I LOVE THE 90S")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) I love the '90s.

ULABY: That VH1 show, called "I Love The '90s," has not run for a while, but the network is about to launch a new scripted show about the early days of hip hop, set in 1990.

SEITH MANN: (Unintelligible), guys.

ULABY: On the set of the show "The Breaks" in East Brooklyn, executive producer Seith Mann says, yeah, you can find other hip-hop dramas on TV right now, like "Empire" on Fox and "The Get Down" on Netflix.

MANN: There are a lot of people that are beginning to recognize and pay attention to the importance of this culture and this audience now. But VH1 has been on it for years.

ULABY: With shows like "Behind The Music," "Flavor Of Love" and the network's most successful, franchise "Love & Hip Hop."

MCCARTHY: We always told a hip-hop story.

ULABY: Chris McCarthy has been president of VH1 for a year. He says hip-hop's fan base cuts across racial demographics, and it's appealingly young. He says when the network started about 30 years ago, 20 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds were non-white. Now the number's nearly 50 percent.

MCCARTHY: You know, millennials grew up with a cellphone in their hand. They grew up in a world where these demographic shifts were happening around them and they were connected to different every day.

ULABY: So here's how VH1 brands itself as different - through a set of values identified through the show "Flavor Of Love."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FLAVOR OF LOVE")

FLAVOR FLAV: Flavor Flav.

ULABY: With that show's hit rating records in 2006, VH1 doubled down. It decided the channel would be about love for the '90s, hip-hop and subverting more successful mainstream shows. "Flavor Of Love" was always intended to spoof a massive hit for ABC.

MCCARTHY: You know, that was a counter, almost, to "The Bachelor." And it was a little bit insane, but we pretended like it was real.

ULABY: Just as VH1's top reality shows now, "Love & Hip Hop" and "Basketball Wives" answer back to Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise. Robin Boylorn is a communications professor at University of Alabama. At 38, she and her friends are slightly old for VH1's target audience, but...

ROBIN BOYLORN: Our guilty-pleasure TV is VH1.

ULABY: Yet they mock it by calling it...

BOYLORN: Ratchet TV or ratchet reality TV.

ULABY: That means, basically, garbage reality shows that are still fun to watch. Ratchet, says Boylorn, means...

BOYLORN: The opposite of respectability and the opposite of what is expected of dignified black folk.

ULABY: There was a time when people were ticked off about the ratchetness (ph) of some VH1 shows, but Boylorn says the channel's toned it down, partly with new shows like a cooking program starring Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MARTHA & SNOOP'S POTLUCK DINNER PARTY")

SNOOP DOGG: Just to clarify, I'm not high right now, but whoever gave us this show, they must have been.

ULABY: And VH1's upcoming scripted show, "The Breaks," is pretty prestige. It stars and was produced by alumna of "The Wire," only generally acknowledged as one of the best TV shows in history. "The Breaks" is something like a hip-hop answer to "Madmen," with young Afton Williamson as a striver.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BREAKS")

AFTON WILLIAMSON: (As Nikki Jones) I'm Nikki Jones. I just graduated top of my class from George Washington University, and I was...

ULABY: She doesn't want to be a singer. She wants to run a label. Actor Wood Harris, who played "The Wire's" Avon Barksdale, plays her mentor - partly Don Draper, partly Russell Simmons.

WILLIAMSON: She can find her own game plan in him. He's bigger than life, and she's trying to be him.

ULABY: Actress Afton Williamson is in so many ways also the target audience for VH1. She's 32, loves hip-hop and the '90s, so she reveled in preparing for this role.

WILLIAMSON: I studied Queen Latifah. I studied every single black woman.

ULABY: Executive producer Seith Mann noticed that when filming a scene when Williamson's character is producing a rapper.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BREAKS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, rapping) All right. That's what I'm talking about.

(Rapping) I remember when I first heard Rakim spit. It was destined.

MANN: And she starts bouncing her head. And the way she's shaking her head, that is a '90s headshake. I didn't give her no note. She brought that, and I was like, she knows this period.

ULABY: "The Breaks" was piloted as a movie on VH1. The series starts in January. VH1 President Chris McCarthy says the channel's relevance depends on an audience that's effortlessly pluralistic and a development team heavy on female executives.

MCCARTHY: We're changing culture and the way that people perceive it. I don't think anybody would have thought a year or two ago that we would have the majority of the top-20 reality series.

ULABY: Or the definitive re-enacted '90s headshake. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.