The Real World freed MTV from depending on music videos.

Evidence

But Freston had other ideas. As the ratings came in, he began to realize that he might have found his dreamed-of hedge against a coming video crash; and so MTV commissioned a second season, set in Los Angeles. It attracted much larger audiences than its predecessor, and so there naturally followed a third season and a fourth. Over time the show and its format became the cornerstone of the new MTV, freeing it from its parlous dependence on music videos. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 833

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: MTV abandoned music for reality TV once it saw higher ratings. — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 133

Broader Connections

• MTV abandoned music for reality TV once it saw higher ratings. #expands (0.90) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 133