I miss MTV

God I'm stupid. In the middle of this particular entry the kid asked me to check her blog to see if her audio post went through. Without thinking I opened another browser and logged out of blogger and back in as her. Her entry was there, and I came back to this window to finish my blog. It was good too. But as soon as I hit 'publish' I was taken to the goddamned login screen and promptly lost the entire blog. *sigh* My bad..

Anyway I was just waxing philosophical on the fact that MTV is becoming a bit of a joke in that it rarely shows videos anymore. It's bread and butter has fallen victim to a hungry audience's appetite for mostly reality programming. I blame Real World.

I remember when MTV first debuted. What a revolution that was. I was at the perfect age too because I was just beginning to enjoy more mature music and learning to put bands with songs I heard on the radio. With MTV I was able to put faces with the bands as well because I didn't keep up with the music rags at that age.

A lot of the videos in the beginning were made on the cheap and consisted mostly of concert footage but gradually, with the success of MTV and the greater access to the bands for fans the videos began to improve. I think Duran Duran were great pioneers of the artistic music video. I know their vids combined with their sex appeal is what did me in.

God I totally remember fighting my family for use of the only TV in the house so I could watch my MTV. I really did want my MTV damnit but most of the time I had to wait for the weekend after the parentals had gone to bed to get the most access to it. Then I'd sit for hours watching the videos and I remember the agonizing waits I had to endure waiting for a favourite one to play. The Vee-jays were the epitome of cool. I'd even watch the USA channel's attempt to combat MTV's popularity with their Night Flight programming which consisted of video and bad Andy Warhol movies.

Ahhh to be young again.

When did MTV stop showing videos? Was the Real World really the video's downfall? It certainly seemd to be another revolution for the young network. Throw some hipsters into a fishbowl and let the world watch. How cool! Slowly over time more and more programming began to invade the airtime and it became difficult to catch blocks of videos until one day, they were gone.

Oh sure I know they show some occasionally but I'll be damned if I'm going to sit through crap programming to get to them. So I stopped watching.

I have a coworker who will ask me now and again if I've seen some show on MTV and I have to woefully tell her that I haven't. To me, MTV's just not as cool as it once was. It's just not the same. And I don't think it's an age issue, though what the hell do I know. Maybe it is. Maybe what they sho today is what the kids want.

It just doesn't appeal to me.