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, loc. 833