Billy Corgan Thinks MTV and the CIA May Have Colluded to Torpedo Rock & Roll. About That…

Billy Corgan Thinks MTV and the CIA May Have Colluded to Torpedo Rock & Roll. About That… Rock was alive and well in the late Nineties. Maybe Corgan just didn't like what he heard By Kory Grow Kory Grow Contact Kory Grow on X View all posts by Kory Grow March 3, 2026 Last week, Billy Corgan made a wild assertion on his podcast, The Magnificent Others : “I think — and I will say it overtly — I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.” He then expounded on this belief, explaining just who he believes deflated rock’s potency: “If you were at MTV or around MTV 1997, ’98, suddenly they decided rock was out, when rock was still very, very high up in the thing and it was replaced by rap, right?” he said. “Their standards and practices immediately shifted. … Some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that, again, above my pay grade, but I saw it happen. I did witness it happen.” Aside from the eyebrow-raising belief that the CIA colluded with MTV’s parent company, Viacom, to torpedo rock’s omnipresence, it seems Corgan either has his facts wrong or doesn’t remember the Nineties as well as he thinks he does. First off, perusing a random issue of Billboard’s “Video Monitor” chart from November 1998 shows that MTV’s Top 10 that month included plenty of rock videos by Alanis Morissette, Barenaked Ladies, Korn, and Hole. Nearly a year later, in October 1999, the same chart reported on an MTV Top 10 that included Limp Bizkit, Bush, Kid Rock, and the Offspring. The Number One song of the week was Blink-182’s “All the Small Things.” Say it ain’t so, rock did not go. Second, there are a couple of bitter pills Corgan needs to swallow. One is that MTV’s programming, like that of most TV stations, has always been more or less dictated by advertising. (Yes, apparently, that many people watch Ridiculousness .) To sell commercials, Viacom needed to broadcast music videos that attracted consumers between the ages of 12 and 24, and that meant constantly changi...