I Want My MTV!

Here is a column I wrote for the Daily Eastern News that never made it on:

MTV. Music Television. At one time this was a true statement. But in the past years MTV has shifted its focus away from Music and beefed up its actor based programs. Granted, back in the day there were still shows on MTV like Real World, Liquid Television, and Beavis and Butthead. But those were the night programs they ran. During the day it was a lot of videos. This changed slowly and has now evolved into hardly ever showing a music video in its entirety.

Their focus has completely shifted away from music and into cheap, low-end programming. And for most of us, there are a few shows we’ll watch, but there is also a want. A feeling of nostalgia. There are times when a lot of us sit in front of MTV and just wish there were playing hours of music videos like they use to.

Like being able to still sing the theme song from “Salute Your Shorts,” we yearn for the old MTV. But if they really did go back to the programming we all use to love, we would discover that we can’t stand it. The old way of programming worked fine for us back when cell phones and the internet were no where near the way they are today. We could sit in the house for hours watching their music videos and occasional segments of Jenny McCarthy working her magic on the set of “Singled Out.”

But today we are a much faster moving generation. We can’t take in the information fast enough. The fast paced style of MTV and its programming brethren seem to fit perfectly into our lives. No longer do we want, or have time, to sit for hours watching their music videos. We still want the videos, but only to casually look at online or to post to our networking sites.

We may think we miss part of what we use to love; but really we are seemingly catered to better now then before. Seemingly because of the thought that MTV has merely sold us, in essence, ourselves (but much cooler and more profitable). We’ve been sold the idea of the Mook (the sexually obsessed male) and Midriff (the female who desires sexual desirability). Shallow, self-absorbed characters who focus on physical appearance and personal satisfaction.

Look more closely at what you watch and you can be sure to play “Where’s Waldo” with these characters. Everything is done to make us feel good and we seem to enjoy it. We sometimes think we liked how it use to be, but we don’t. There is only one certainty in this whole mess: Music Television is no longer about the music.