Q & A : The Buzz on MTV’s ‘Buzz’

“Buzz,” a new MTV cable program that premieres Sunday at 9 p.m., is a giddy montage of interviews, street scenes and cultural icons organized around a different theme each week. Co-creator Jon Klein talked about the show with Sharon Bernstein.

What is “Buzz”? Is it a news show?

It’s not really meant to be categorizable in any traditional sense. There’s a bit of news, there’s a bit of art, there’s a bit of current affairs, there’s a bit of documentary to it.

It’s on Fridays in England and on Sundays on MTV in the States. It’s a regular TV show. It’s edited to be very fast-moving, but it’s meant to be watched like a regular TV show.

How is the show organized? Is there a plot?

It’s sort of thematic. The first U.S. show is about cultural stereotypes, so people talk a lot about racism or about sexism or about other forms of cultural stereotyping.

It’s kind of like meditations on a theme. There are different elements to it; it’s through different people’s eyes, through different stories, but it does stick to the theme fairly religiously.

How do you get information?

We set up bureaus all over the world. They’re not really bureaus in a traditional sense, they’re basically just kind of knowledgeable people, people who know what’s happening in a city. We’ve got people in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, Germany, Ghana and Cairo. And these people just call us with information about what’s happening. They read newspapers, they go to the movies, they go to the clubs. And they just tell us what it’s like in Cairo, for example.

Does your sound track have songs in it?

We’re pretty free with (the sound track). We take all the sound off the interviews we do. We mix it with music both off videos and off records and old commercials and stock footage and make a kind of collage with it.

The show is very sound driven, the sound is pretty important. We spend half our time in sound studios and half our time in video studios.

And that’s your way of staying in keeping with the “Music Television” aspect of it?

I don’t think it was that planned. But it just happens to be a real colorful rhythmic type of show, so we use a lot of music, we push the rhythm along, we cut to the beat. We do cut it very much like a music video. It’s sort of like a music video with content.

Would you describe one of the programs?

In the show that we do about the future, we open with a segment where we talk to people from about 15 countries about what their concerns are for what’s going to happen in the ‘90s.

We then go into a segment on “virtual reality,” which is this artificial kind of reality where people can literally dive into a world which is created on their TV or on their computer, and they can interact with computer images. We’ve then got a piece on computer hackers, people who can break into your phone account and learn your credit history, who can break into government files and access sensitive documents, who have this ethic that they are the last bastion of goodness before a possible police state.

And then at the end, there’s a piece where we talk to kids who go to the United Nations school, kids from all backgrounds, and we ask them about the future.

Do you think it’s too much of a kaleidoscope for people to be able to watch for a half-hour?

We have no idea. I mean, our friends think it’s great.

This show is meant to be understood and to be watched. We don’t want it to go over people’s heads or be too up in the air about things. The intention is to communicate. We just hope that people give it a chance as it wings its way into their sitting rooms, their living rooms.

“Buzz” really doesn’t want to be confusing or nebulous. Sometimes the fact that it’s such a new format and looks so different can confuse people initially, but it’s not something where we’re trying to be obtuse. It’s just a new format that may take people a few minutes or maybe a couple of shows to get used to. But we think that once they do, it will be worthwhile.

What does MTV hope to get out of this show?

I think there are only so many music videos you can watch and MTV definitely realizes that, and it’s going much more show-oriented. “Buzz” is sort of a bulwark of that phase in MTV’s history.

What kind of a commitment has MTV made to the show?

We’re taping the first 13 now, and we’re starting in July with the next 13. We assume it will be 26 shows, and then we’ll see what happens. It should definitely establish itself as a hit or a miss by then.

What age group are you looking for?

I would say it’s for people who are 14 to 35, but I’m not sure. I don’t know many people who are under 14, and I’m not sure if people in the older age group would like it. It’s for people who grew up with television.

Does the show have a point of view?

We’re trying to show a side (of life) that isn’t usually portrayed on TV shows.

We aren’t really taking any particular political stands or waving anyone’s flag. I think if anything, we’re asking people to doubt the flag wavers, to doubt the things that will only tell you what to do and what to think, to doubt advertisers, to doubt TV shows.

Sometimes if you’re watching a news show, the newscaster can be saying something which sounds very straightforward but is actually a very subtle way of making you believe one thing or another. You hear things in ads where things are presented in one way, and it’s really for the convenience of selling that product, so “Buzz” sometimes mocks this kind of corporate slickness in certain advertisements and certain TV shows and says this kind of TV show can be a bit dangerous.

So “Buzz” looks like a TV show that’s a bit dangerous sometimes, because it’s trying to point out that TV can be a bit dangerous.

What is your vision about what this program will do for the people who watch it?

We hope it makes them think or wake up a bit. This is not television that is meant to be relaxing or is meant to coddle you. This is television that sticks its hand out of the TV set and shakes you a bit.