MTV brought Total Request Live back to its old glass-walled studio above Times Square on Thursday, taping a reunion special from 2 to 6 p.m. at 1515 Broadway inside One Astor Plaza, with original VJs returning and most of NSYNC rumored to be among the surprise guests filling out the broadcast.
The taping, which drew a live studio audience, was billed as a celebration of TRL's legacy, according to Time Out New York, which reported the show would feature surprise celebrity guests and live musical performances alongside the returning VJ lineup. That lineup reportedly included Carson Daly, Hilarie Burton, La La Anthony, Dave Holmes, Vanessa Lachey, Damien Fahey and Quddus, the faces who once counted down America's favorite videos from the same Times Square perch. During its original run, TRL helped turn acts like Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Eminem, Blink-182, Christina Aguilera and NSYNC into global superstars, the outlet noted, while fans gathered outside MTV's Times Square studio.
Four Out of Five NSYNC Members Expected
NSYNC members were allegedly expected among the surprise guests, and Lance Bass seemed to confirm as much in an Instagram comment cited by Time Out New York: “4 of us will be there! Come on out!” NSYNC has five members, and Bass's comment left Justin Timberlake's status as the open question hanging over the reunion. Timberlake left the group in April 2002, though he reunited with Lance Bass, J.C. Chasez, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick onstage at the Wiltern in Los Angeles in March 2024 — the group's first stage appearance together since the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, per the same outlet's reporting. Whether Timberlake would make a cameo at the TRL taping remained speculation.
The studio itself carries decades of pop-culture weight. MTV's TRL set sits on the second floor of One Astor Plaza, whose glass windows overlook Times Square, where street-level crowds could interact with live broadcasts inside. The same building also houses Broadway's Minskoff Theatre one floor up. It was that street-level visibility that once turned ordinary afternoon tapings into citywide events.
When NSYNC Last Broke Times Square
NSYNC's pull on that stretch of Broadway is not new. When the group released No Strings Attached on March 21, 2000, an estimated 8,000 fans mobbed Times Square near the MTV studios and the old Virgin Megastore, forcing nearby storefronts to close twice in a single day, according to MusicDives. That album went on to sell more than 2.4 million copies in its first week. Carson Daly, who anchored TRL from its September 1998 debut through 2003, was the face of the show during that commercially dominant Y2K stretch before leaving to host late-night television and later join NBC's Today.
NSYNC's current comeback has been building for a few years. In September 2023, the group released Better Place for the Trolls Band Together soundtrack, its first new single in more than two decades, debuting at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and tying I Want You Back as the group's highest-charting debut, per Iowa Public Radio. That single followed a brief onstage reunion at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, where the group presented an award to Taylor Swift. Bass later credited Swift's viral excitement over that moment with helping spark the fresh wave of fan momentum behind NSYNC's resurgence, according to American Songwriter.
MTV's Long History of Reviving the Brand
Thursday's taping is not MTV's first attempt to resurrect the franchise. The network previously rebooted TRL on October 2, 2017, bringing in a new host team that included DC Young Fly and Tamara Dhia, before the daily afternoon broadcasts were phased out by 2019, according to The Guardian. That reboot struggled to compete with the rise of YouTube and mobile video streaming, a challenge that still frames MTV's efforts to lean on its legacy brands in a streaming-dominated media landscape.
The original show's format was built on a simple hook: viewers voted for their top 10 daily music videos by phone and online, an early form of interactive television before social media existed, per Wikipedia's account of the series. TRL debuted on MTV on September 14, 1998, formed by merging the network's Total Request video show with MTV Live, and it wrapped its primary decade-long run with a three-hour finale on November 16, 2008. By 2007, the countdown formula itself had evolved to factor in digital downloads and radio airplay alongside viewer votes.
Ahead of the taping, radio station 106.1 BLI put out a casting call on September 25 inviting fans to apply for studio audience seats, instructing applicants to bring early-2000s energy and be comfortable appearing on camera.
