12 Angry Viewers: Lost Gem of Mid-Ninties MTV

12 Angry Viewers wasn't the most popular show. I'm not sure any of my classmates in the 5th grade watched it, though we all watched MTV for sure. Wikipedia describes the premise:

"12 'Angry Viewers' were chosen. Through the course of a week they would watch several "brand new" videos and vote at the end of the episode which was the best. On Friday the best video out of the four chosen during the week was chosen and put into "heavy rotation" on the network." 

Maybe it wasn't that great and I'm inflating it, but unfortunately there isn't enough content online for me to re-live it. When Googling 12 Angry Viewers, one of the first things to come up is this hilarious article from a 1997 Philly newspaper advertising auditions for the show. Right off the bat, this journalist wins me with the line, "Say you have an addytood [sic]." Sick. I did have an attitude, and opinions about videos, thank you very much. Could not wait to watch!

I didn't know it yet, but I was viewing the most music video saturated programming of my lifetime. It's what I would consider a golden era for MTV. Many would disagree. It was a steep decline, and no one could see behind them. I also didn't know that I was in-taking a smaller percentage of music videos than previous generations of viewers. With shows like Cartoon Sushi and Liquid Television providing dark, violent and sexy cartoons pre-Adult Swim, I couldn't complain. MTV was a guide book for everything 20-somethings were into. This demographic in actually was starting to shy away from MTV and soon the programming would become less pseudo-adult and be more teen oriented.

If you lived through the early aughts of MTV and beyond, you know the hilariously low number of music videos they played during that era. It started with thoughts like, "MTV only plays videos if they're on TRL!" and devolved into "They cancelled TRL and now they only play Teen Mom and The Hills."

If you can imagine, the mid-nineties had their own critics about MTV's programming. Claiming even then that MTV was slipping on the video front. 12 Angry Viewers was one of several shows used to spoon feed videos to the masses, including MTV Live, Say What?, and Total Request. I suppose the executives agreed that the youths needed to watch things in scheduled show formats. Blocks of videos without a gimmick wouldn't keep their attention. I suppose this is true to a certain extent. I get the draw of watching a show. If it's a video block, maybe you change the channel when a video you don't like comes on. If the promise of a winner or an interview is ahead, then maybe you power through it.



The promo for 12 Angry Viewers is perfectly mid-90s. It has all the bells, whistles and flashing lights (literally) to get your attention. It's narrated by a Daria-voiced gen-xer, almost cooing over how satisfyingly cynical these Angry Viewers are. The visuals say, "We're taking the idea of throwing rotten tomatoes, and we're blowing it up!" It says, 'new futuristic fonts.' It says, 'negatives are negative.' It says 'extreme,' right before Xtreme! became a thing.

I have a couple solid memories from watching 12 Angry Viewers:

1. It was the first time I saw Portishead's Only You video. This nightmare-like underwater warehouse video was directed by Chris Cunningham, and it won during it's week on the show. This gloomy, jazzy song with strings, Theremin, and mixing and scratching was a revelation to me. Two years later I would finally purchase their self titled album, and Portishead would become one of my favorite bands. In the mean time I made sure to tune in to 12 Angry Viewers every day that week to see it. 

2. The Propellerheads History Repeating was great. It won. End of story.



3. There were Father's Day / Mother's Day episodes where parents watched videos with their college age kids (hilarity ensued - mom's didn't like Korn). One of the videos played was Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, because "Daddies." 

4. Air's Sexy Boy was also a contender on the show. It didn't win or loose. It wasn't worth banning, but it wasn't worth Heavy Rotation either. However, this song sounded retro and French, so I loved it. 



5. Something else that was retro and French, is a music video panned for being too weird. I don't remember if it won or lost, AND I don't remember the artist. I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Maybe you can help me: The video is of two men preparing for a skydive. But the sequence goes forwards and backwards in a loop. They fly up into the plane, and then jump back out, etc. Inside the plane is a man who kind of looks like Nathaniel Hornblower, making waffles with badminton rackets, and mouthing to the lyrics (the only lyrics) sung by a breathy woman, "I love it." 

When I type this description into Google, I get nothing.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!!

This is it!! Gigantic thanks to Blogger user Hessell for answering my prayers.



12 Angry Viewers was a smart show because it purposefully played obscure and artful videos when this was going out of style. This may have been done for shock value, and to illicit strong reactions from the contestants, but at least it gave them a fighting chance on the airwaves.