Backstage Pass

    The end of the “TRL” era may have officially come Sunday night, as MTV shutdown production on the countdown show that used to be teenage America’s go-to guide for music, style and fashion. But its influenced started to wane years ago, coinciding with the rise of broadband Internet connections and video-on-demand sites like YouTube, MySpace and MTV.com.
    Carson Daly, longtime host of “TRL” and current host of NBC’s “Last Call With Carson Daly,” said after the show’s finale that no one TV show has that sort of singular power today and there may never be another one like it again.
    Not only has the music mainstream fractured into numerous niches, but it’s getting so that those niches don’t even interact any more. For example, on “TRL,” rockers and popsters and hip-hop heads would check out the show each afternoon to see whose song would come out on top and maybe get introduced to something outside their favorite genre.
    For example, Fall Out Boy singer Patrick Stump said that Blink-182's “All the Small Things” video “single-handedly changed the trajectory of ‘TRL’,” showing rock could hold its own against pop and hip-hop. “It was a totally democratic thing,” Stump said backstage. “People just voted on the videos.”
    So where are teenagers heading to replace the guidance “TRL” once provided?
    “The Internet – a lot of different places, niche sites online,” Daly said. “They’re not going to one central place, which is the whole 2.0 thing. The world is a different place. Ten years ago, we were that place. We were the hub, the destination spot, the place you had to go. Now you can sit in the back of your classroom and find out the Top 10 videos on your cellphone.”

PHOTO: Carson Daly and Damien Fahey at the "TRL" finale Sunday night. Photo by Peter Kramer for Associated Press.