Idolator

i would love a television that didn't let me change the channel, or at least gave me 10 or fewer channels to choose from. Freedom from choice! Seriously! Also, watching videos on the internet gives me a headache. Also, I am old.

MTV bashing still? I gotta admit that the whole joke about them not playing videos or music or whatever anymore and isn't that so ironic was playing out nearly a decade and a half ago. I haven't watched it in years and my life continues unabated. People who still get worked about it need to move the hell on.

@Lucas Jensen: I think the twist on this one is that he's saying that Mtv was NEVER worthwhile... which, of course, is just bullshit click-boosting unless the author is under the age of 16.

I think the blogger's points about the album are far more interesting/provocative than those about MTV.

The blogger argued that only music nerds love albums and they are ruining the record industry:

"...you are a music-nerd. You are a part of a niche. Your niche can't support the music industry. What you want is going to kill the music industry, not save it."

That's a bold statement considering that the independent record industry that caters to "nerds" is still getting by.

He'll probably post his own comment (though he's never been much of a spammer for his own site), but 30f pretty much goes off on the idea here

I think we all know that despite what we say or think every child at one point is going to be told by their parents, "you can't watch Mtv, its inappropriate" and then one day they will see it, and think "I am older now, and this is what I should be watching" and they will suddenly become fans. Those children will be around age 10-15 and they will have their minds warped into believing that real people live their lives in the hills, on a beach or a harbor. The guys should spike their hair and say dude, and the girls should be catty and idiotic. There goes the downfall of every subsequent generation. But hey, MTV is cool right? Everyone loves hip gen x-ers who "rock". And come to think of it, everyone should get their music from what they hear on the latest abc commercial, grey's anatomy show, or OC soundtrack. My god, where has the world gone...we suck, I'm moving to England. Cheerio.

On the one hand, I think this is a bit of revisionist history - before YouTube and blogs and Napster, there just weren't a lot of places to get music and music-based content. As a kid growing up far, far beyond the reaches of Hot 97 airwaves, Yo! MTV Raps and BET's Rap City were my two main sources for hip hop. Especially for fans of niche music, the videos were an integral part of the MTV experience.

That said, MTV built its cultural cache through non-music programming like Beavis and Butt-Head and the Real World and Liquid Television. The absence of fresh ideas like teh aforementioned (yes, the Real World was a fresh idea in 1992) is why MTV is suffering, at least in the eyes of anyone over 17.

The "MTV was never great" argument isn't even good enough to call 'revisionist history' -- it's just dumb history. The original MTV was music + VJs + commercials -- it was radio with pictures.

What's next? This moron telling us how radio didn't do anything useful?

Likewise, his bit about monetizing music videos is bizarre -- radio and video is promotional, not profitable. Does this guy know anything about what the world looked like before ipods?

Thanks for the mention, Halfwit. Some people do think that I am a big sel-promoter/spammer. Oh well.

re: Spinachdip
I think MTV built its cultural cache long before it started with the game shows and room-mate fight fests. It built its cultural cache through videos. Ok, so it borrowed the cache from musicians and video directors.

MTV has lots of new ideas - they appeal greatly to a younger audience, just not you or me. Laguna Beach - a fake, but real, that is actually fake show is just as ground-breaking as Beavis was in its day. I just don't care to watch it.

I have posted about this before, but MTV doesn't appeal to people over 17 because its not supposed to. When MTV started, it was targeted at (I guess) 13 to 25 year olds. Now its demo is probably more like 10-15. That is the way it is going for all networks with the proliferation of cable channels. Every network is going after a thinner and thinner demographic slice as the marketplace gets more crowded.

Of course MTV doesn't appeal to college kids. Nickelodeon doesn't appeal to high school kids - it ain't supposed to. It can't.

Kids age out of Nickelodeon (which is why they have baby Nick and Zoom and all those age appropriate variations). Kids age out of MTV, a bit faster than they used to, but that doesn't really seem all that new to me. NPR rocks!

@30f: I don't think we disagree on MTV's sustained ability to original content that is, well, original. And I sort of implied that the reason grown ups trash MTV is because they grew up, not because MTV changed (though the VMAs have noticeably slipped). I simply mentioned RW and B&B is because they came around during my formative years. If I were writing this comment 10 years from now, I'd be talking about Laguna Beach and Made, two totally awesome shows that I'm too old to enjoy.

But my main point was that by music video viewing is only lame because you're looking at it from 2007-tinted glasses. It's not like we didn't have options back then, yet kids like me chose to watch music videos over other entertainment options.

To dismiss it would be akin to saying how lame it is to let mp3 bloggers control what we listen to. Sure, MTV is "corporate" and bloggers are technically independent (albeit at the mercy of promo mp3s and "leaks"), but we're still letting total strangers be our taste maker.

Though I still argue that MTV's cultural cache comes from the original content. They got into people's homes and became popular because of the music videos, but it wouldn't have nearly the influence on popular culture without its non-music shows (even if that cache was built partly through dumpster diving for network rejects in Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller and My So Called Life).

@leadster618: Are you sure your American palate is refined enough for the Sugababes?

@spinachdip: On the flip side, growing up in the hood I would have never been exposed to rock (via Corey Glover and Vernon Reid) if it weren't for MTV.