The other reason: it made the MTV VMA awards show almost relevant for 2.3 nanoseconds.
Now, I've written about MTV before. In July of 2007 I lamented that MTV had jumped the shark into complete irrelevance. In September 2007 I actually reviewed the train wreck that was the VMA awards that year. And in November 2009 I pondered the show "120 Minutes", a former MTV staple relegated to the pre-dawn hours of VH-1 Classic.
For you younger readers, if there really are any oute, MTV stands ostensibly for Music Television, and when it started it played 24-hours a day nothing but music videos. Now you just go to YouTube when you want to see a video, and MTV and its evil clones MTV2 and VH1 just play asanine bullshit all day that sucks your intelligence away. After much public outcry, MTV started playing some videos again early in the morning and calling it AMTV, but still, in an average broadcast day they are devoting less than 20% of their time to music on a good day.
Looking at the 24 hours comprising Thursday, September 5th 2013, according to the program guide on my DVR, starting at midnight there's 3 hours of Catfish: The TV Show, about people getting screwed over publicly in internet dating hoaxes. That's healthy and educational. From 3am to 4am you get Clubland, billed as a music news show, and then from 4am to 9am they play the aforementioned AMTV videos. Since I have a job to go to, I'll be missing that but I'm pretty sure in five hours they'll play the same 90 minutes over & over again, and each hour will contain perhaps five to six videos tops.From 9 to noon you get four episodes of True Life, where people bitch about their woes, from "I'm Desperate to Have a Baby" to "I Have a Hot Mom" . A couple more hours of Catfish follows.
They encourage you to hurt people online. Professional & classy, MTV. |
From three to six it's some sort of idiot dating game show called Parental Control. Stimulating music entertainment, no?
At six you get some episodic series called Friend Zone, and from seven till eleven back to back episodes of Ray J, the guy who screwed Kim Kardashian on the video that made her famous. His show "Ridiculousness" sounds aptly named.
And to end the day you get from 11pm to midnite, a couple episodes of yet another lame-assed game show, Money From Strangers. So, out of 24 hours you get five hours of music, and just as much Catfish. The rest is just as lame. Music Television is 80% bullshit.
Yet, every year, they put on a self-serving spectacle, a mockery of an awards show to celebrate a medium they pioneered and made billions from but no longer give a rat's ass about. A good 75% of the videos they award stuff for are just whatever some popster's record label paid to promote and have never been seen by most of America unless it was through YouTube. MTV is as relevant to pop music these days as Rolling Stone Magazine is. Washed up crap.
When I was young and the video medium was new, there was groundbreaking animation and CGI imagery, and creative use of the medium by true artists. Now we get a skinny twunt trying to shake off her Disney child star image wearing a giant teddy bear and making stupid faces like a titless Jenny McCarthy. And really, kid, you didn't break any new ground in whorishness that wasn't already covered by Madonna, Britney, or Christina in years past.
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Steve, we'd like to invite you to become one of our Authors in Alexandria. This invitation has been extended to you by email as well.
In addition to posting on anything you wish, as you desire, you may of course mirror posts you've already written from here or elsewhere to gain a different or additional audience or for any other reason that appeals to you.
If you think you might be interested, contact me through Alexandria or by return email via this comment and I'll forward our formal invitations for you to look over and return if you decide to proceed.
Come contribute your perspectives and opinions to the ongoing conversations there or, even better, start some new - and different - ones of your own.
I look forward to hearing from you.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
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