Corporate Press Release Theater: TRL Dies, Will Live On in Debates

MTV's Total Request Live, perhaps the ultimate TV artifact of the boy-band era, will be no more after November, ending a ten-year run.

One of TRL's legacies, beyond unleashing Carson Daly on an unsuspecting world, was to let fans at home pepper the screens with e-mail shout-outs during the show. That technique will go on, updated for a new medium, on Current TV during the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. That's right: you too will be able to annotate Current's feed of the four debates, via Twitter. From the network:

SAN FRANCISCO (September 15, 2008) - Current, a new breed of media company that works with its young adult audience to create and distribute media, has partnered with the pulse of what's happening—Twitter, to present “Hack the Debate,” creating unprecedented interactivity for viewers of the 2008 presidential debate broadcasts.

Beginning with the first presidential debate on September 26, “Hack the Debate” will, for the very first time, integrate real-time Twitter messages (aka “tweets”) over major portions of a live television broadcast. As Twitter users tweet throughout the course of the live broadcasts, Current and Twitter will collect comments regarding the debate and layer the individual messages over the debate feed.

MY BOY JOE BIDEN IN THE HOUSE! @SARAHP: BRUSH OFF THE HATERS WOOOOOO!