Even if you didn’t spend the ’90s listening to Superchunk and Jeff Buckley, you probably remember “120 Minutes,” the two-hour program that focused on alternative music and last aired on MTV in 2000 (it moved to MTV2 before going off the air in 2003). And now MTV has announced that it’s bringing the show back to MTV2, along with host Matt Pinfield.
MTV2 will air a brand-new monthly version of the trailblazing music program with a weekly online counterpart dubbed “120 Seconds” on MTV Hive. Both will be hosted by Matt Pinfield, the walking musical encyclopedia and industry veteran whose original “120 Minutes” run made his name synonymous with the best of college rock, indie rock and everything else under the umbrella of “alternative.”
“I’m so excited that ‘120’ is coming back,” Pinfield told MTV News. “It’s been so influential in so many people’s lives. Musicians, music fans, actors — so many people have told me the show was pivotal and life-changing for them.” [MTV]
Whoa, easy there, Pinfield. It’s a TV show about music, not the discovery of penicillin. Still, I look forward to a real person talking intelligently about emerging music that I might like, rather than MTV’s interchangeable youth-bots lording over an audience of screaming teenagers. This is the first not-stupid thing that MTV’s done in about ten years.
