I want my (new) MTV
Network’s reinvention is aimed at entertaining the millennial generation
For someone slated to be the face of a new TV show replacing one of the most influential series of our generation on pop culture’s most revered network, Alexa Chung is surprisingly not nervous.
“I thought I would be more so,” says the British TV personality, whose hourlong, live variety program, “It’s On with Alexa Chung,” premieres June 15 on MTV as the centerpiece of the network’s rebranding campaign post-“Total Request Live.” “But I just feel like if people like you, they do; if they don’t, it’s fine,” she adds.
The 25-year-old is relatively unknown stateside — except for photographs of her in cute outfits in fashion glossies. But it’s her too-cool-to-care attitude that impressed MTV executives when searching for the host of the most important of the network’s nine new shows aimed at the millennial generation — you know, kids whose fleeting attention is sprinkled over multiple iChat and Facebook conversations via their iPhones.
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Based on the U.K.’s “Lily Allen And Friends,” “It’s On” will be a mix of celebrity interviews and performances taking place in a studio set up to look like Chung’s loft apartment.
“[The premise] will be me inviting people into my home and getting to know them better,” explains Chung, who recently moved into a Williamsburg pad with her boyfriend, Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, and is simultaneously helping decorate both places.
Audience members can send in clips to her show, ask celebrity questions, or tweet in real time if they think, say, a performance sucked.
“We’re not going to be kissing the *** of whoever’s coming on,” says Chung. “It’s much more free and honest and truthful.”
If anyone can translate that to the tech-obsessed kids with ever-shrinking attention spans that MTV is seeking, it seems to be Chung.
“I’m online looking at some pretty sweet Lanvin dresses,” she openly admits during our phone call. “And I’ve been Twittering — I just reminded myself not to swear in this interview.”