A decade ago, Jeff Gaspin, VH1’s new vice president of programming, suggested that the channel do a countdown show – a Casey Kasem-y thing with musicians, not critics, picking the rankings. In 1998, VH1 premiered “100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll.”
Pulling into its 10th year, VH1’s franchise includes 52 shows, some of which are not “Greatest” but rather “Most Softsational” (Soft-Rock Songs), “Most Awesomely Bad” (Fashion Moments) and “Most Cheesetastic” (TV Stars and Video Tricks Exposed). Along the way, other networks joined in.
So what’s a newspaper that wants to celebrate a decade of Weird Al Yankovic waxing nostalgic on Peter Gabriel to do? As if you had to ask.
The 10 Most Righteously Awe-tastic Moments of Countdown Shows:
10. The farce known as “scientific rankings” is dropped. “The dirty little secret is that the rankings have absolutely no rhyme or reason,” says Jason Cilo, producer of Court TV’s “Most Shocking Courtroom Moments” series. “It’s more about what segments will work together best.”
9. We get addicted. And there’s a scientific explanation! “Human beings evolved to be informationally omnivorous,” says Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University. “We get a jolt of pleasure whenever we learn something new.” It’s an easily digestible sense of accomplishment.
8. Gilbert Gottfried. The scrunchy actor is one of hundreds of “expert celebrities” tapped to make “funny” comments in countdown shows. He gets his own slot in this ranking for three reasons: (a) He has actual acting credits. (b) His refreshing acceptance of his life on the D-minus List. (c) His sheer ubiquity: “Even the countdown shows I logically know I’m not in, I sort of expect myself to pop up.”
7. Celeb commentators admit they have no idea what they’re talking about. “I’ve come into an enormous amount of celebs I’ve never heard of,” says Joel Stein, former Time magazine wunderkind and now alum of such shows as “40 Smokin’ On-Set Hookups” and “25 Sensational Celebrity Meltdowns” (premiering on E! this fall).
6. News shows co-opt the countdown format. In 2003, MSNBC decided that facts could benefit from an injection of suspense, premiering “Countdown With Keith Olbermann.”
5. The Weather Channel debuts “100 Greatest Weather Moments” this past April. It’s so brilliant, it’s amazing no one thought of it before.
4. Networks realize they can jump the shark to infinity. E! has run “101 Biggest Celebrity Oops” more than 50 times.
3. Disparity in the commentator pay scale rocks the countdown world. In 2005, Joel Stein decided that countdown players should demand payment for their free, glib one-liners. He called up Mo Rocca, countdown A-lister, to get him on board. Rocca’s response, according to Stein: “He said: ‘Dude, the rest of us already get paid. You don’t?”‘
2. Dick Clark. The fact that he’d already been helping us practice counting down for 340 years totally primed us for VH1’s 1998 broadcast.
1. We admit defeat. No matter how much we mock, scoff or otherwise ballyhoo countdown shows, we will watch them to the end.
