MTV Tries to Pump Up the Jam at Awards Show

Madonna wore a wedding gown and sang “Like a Virgin” to open the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. Three years ago on the show, Andrew “Dice” Clay was banned for profanity, and Axl Rose from the rock group Guns N’ Roses exchanged punches backstage with Vince Neil from Motley Crue.

Last year, Paul Reubens, dressed up as Pee-wee Herman, chose the MTV awards show to make his first public appearance since being arrested for indecent exposure, and pop star Prince bared his bottom on stage in a see-through lace outfit while dozens of men and women in togas simulated a Roman orgy behind him.

MTV’s annual ceremony recognizing the best music videos of the year has thrived on such surprise and spectacle. And in an attempt to create an even bigger, more outrageous carnival atmosphere this year, MTV has moved Wednesday night’s show to the 12,000-seat Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus.

Last year’s venue, the Universal Amphitheatre, seated 6,000 people. But 5,000 of them were VIPs and record-industry types, who were a bit more restrained in their on-camera enthusiasm than the more typical screaming, dancing, sweating MTV fans who bought or won the remaining 1,000 seats.

This year, 6,000 seats will be made available to fans. About half of those seats--priced at $40 each, with obstructed-view seats ranging from $10 to $20--go on sale today at Pauley Pavilion to UCLA students, while the rest will be sold through Ticketmaster locations beginning Sunday.

Selling more tickets provides the added benefit of defraying the cost of putting on such a large-scale production. In addition to the cable network’s 55.6 million homes, the three-hour MTV awards will go out to 150 countries worldwide and be repackaged later this month in a shorter, syndicated version that has already been sold to 173 U.S. TV stations.

To better feature the eager, stylish MTV crowd on camera, the entire floor of the UCLA gymnasium has been reserved for fans. In an unusual awards-show switch, the record people and celebrities will be seated in the loge section above, although those industry seats are priced at $150.

The fans will literally encircle two giant performance stages, now under construction, and a smaller connecting stage for this year’s host, Dana Carvey. The fans packed in behind the stages will be able to watch the proceedings on giant TV monitors.

“The other awards shows are always sort of stage performances, them (on stage) and us (in the audience). What we’re doing for this, it’s just going to sort of be us,” said production designer Jeremy Railton, whose set-design credits range from the Academy Awards show to Michael Jackson to “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

Some of the show’s more colorful plans include Carvey as Garth, his droopy “Wayne’s World” character, playing drums in a satellite hook-up with U2 from the Silverdome in Michigan; radio host Howard Stern dropping in on an overhead cable; and Guns N’ Roses in a sprawling finale that will utilize all three floor stages.

“Because this is almost a concert in the round,” Railton said, “more people will be closer to the stage. It’s going to feel like an arena show rather than a stage show.”

Producer Joel Gallen said that the atmosphere is equally important for the bands--this year’s other performers are the Black Crowes, Bobby Brown, Def Leppard, Red Hot Chili Peppers, En Vogue, Nirvana, Bryan Adams, Pearl Jam and Eric Clapton--because they’re used to playing to pumped-up partisans in packed-out arenas.

“Fans create an incredible amount of energy,” Gallen said. “The difference between an average awards show and a great awards show is pacing, excitement and energy. Last year, there were a number of great bands on the Grammys and American Music Awards, but they do not generate the kind of enthusiasm in the house the way they do with MTV Video Music Awards.”

Setting the Video Music Awards apart from other awards shows seems to be a prime directive at MTV.

“They really want to be a different awards show. They want it to be loose, silly, free-form, self-deprecating,” Carvey said. “For me, it’s a chance to do anything, and also to make fun of other shows. I always like those introductions where they just summarize someone’s entire career by saying, ‘He was the karate master and Belgian heartthrob who knows how to kick, kick, kick. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s Jean Claude van Damme.’ ”

In Carvey and his repertoire of characters, MTV believes it has found its Billy Crystal, who recently won an Emmy for helping turn the stately Academy Awards into a personal showcase for his quick wit. Carvey takes over for Arsenio Hall, who hosted the previous four shows.

Of all the major industry award shows, MTV’s is widely regarded as the most self-promotional. Rather than hide that, though, MTV--in the extravagant style of rock ‘n’ roll--unabashedly plays it up.

“This is our Super Bowl. It’s our Olympics. It’s our private New Year’s Eve,” boasted Doug Herzog, MTV’s senior vice president of programming. “It’s our annual awards show, our biggest night of the year, the one night we go out, really blow it out, spend a lot of money on a big production, invite all our favorite bands, celebrate music video and have a wild time.”

Despite being one of the highest-profile events in the music industry--managers and record labels scrap to get their artists on as performers each year--the viewing audience on the night of the Video Music Awards is not great, because MTV is only in 60% of all TV households in the country.

MTV’s live cablecast last year was seen in about 4 million homes across the nation. That represents MTV’s highest rating of the year, but it pales in comparison to the 15.4 million households that tuned in the Grammys last year on CBS and the 16.8 million that watched the American Music Awards on ABC. (To compensate, MTV will replay the show repeatedly throughout the month.)

The youth-oriented Fox network, in fact, has knowingly scheduled original episodes of the popular “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place” on Wednesday night against the MTV awards. Last year, a Thursday night lineup of Fox repeats, including “The Simpsons” and “Beverly Hills,” was in direct competition with the MTV awards and only suffered a loss of three audience share points from previous weeks’ averages.

“What tends to happen on MTV is that, quite often, the increase in rating performance they see is not so much from the other program options as from new viewers who normally would not be watching television that night,” said Giles Lundberg, vice president of research and marketing for Fox.

But MTV denies the suggestion that the changes this year are to increase ratings, which dipped slightly last year from the 1990 show.

“We just thought we would like to try something a little bigger,” Herzog said. “We never want to stand in one place too long.

Behind the stage at the amphitheater last year, the different bands’ equipment stretched 50 yards long. By using two main stages this year, Gallen can pick up the pace of the show because he does not have to wait for each band to break down its equipment before setting up the next act. Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers are expected to play back to back in a sort of battle of the bands.

Having two stages will also allow each band to play live sets. Last year, Gallen said, about 25% of the music was prerecorded--Prince, for example, sang and played guitar live but his band air-jammed to recorded music. This year, the entire show will be live for the first time.

Free-lance writer Sharon Bernstein contributed to this story.