Friday, May 6, 2011

There Are Some Things MTV CEOs Won't Do

Resignation Alert

From Ray Gustini, The Atlantic Wire:
Lowbrow reality shows like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom were Judith McGrath's specialty during her seven years as CEO at MTV, but apparently there are some simulated realities even she objects to: McGrath resigned this morning, hours after the premiere of Electric Barbarellas, a pet project of Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone (Viacom owns MTV) that she hated and tried to have killed a year ago.

Mogulite's Amy Tennery says Redstone insisted  MTV proceed with the show when it was in development last summer. McGrath, meanwhile, "fought the Barbarella's airing tooth and nail," only to come up short.

So why did the chairman of Viacom go out on a limb for a reality music show featuring a dancing band?

Because he was in love! The Daily Beast's Peter Lauria reported back in June that the 87-year-old Redstone was "so smitten with a scantily clad new all-girl group dubbed the Electric Barbarellas that he has paid to fly its six members out to New York to meet with record labels," quite an act of generosity for an unknown girl group whose style Lauria describes as a "cross between the Pussycat Dolls and Spice Girls, except raunchier and not as musically gifted."
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