Where’s my MTV?

What ever happened to the best television network to ever broadcast on the face of this earth?

I know this might be difficult to imagine but picture this – a music television station. Not just a television station, but a station completely dedicated to music news and videos.

To top that off, it broadcasted 24 hours a day. Anytime you turned on your tube, even when the other stations had their color bars on, it was there. Waiting to play all your favorite tunes and let you in on vital music information like upcoming concerts and what your favorite musicians were up to.

Heaven, right?

Well, not anymore. MTV nowadays is anything and everything but what it started out to be—great music entertainment. The Stones, the Beatles, The Who, the Pretenders, the Police, David Bowie, and too many more fabulous bands and musicians to list here, were regulars.

But what is today’s MTV? A bunch of shows and the same 15 or 20 top-40 videos shown over and over and over again throughout the day.

So, where did it all fall apart, you might wonder? Well, it’s pretty obvious. MTV isn’t music videos anymore. It’s a game show, a stand-up comedy show, an American Bandstand-Soul Train type dance show, and a bunch of variety-theme talk shows which replay over-played videos here and there in between skits.

What happened to MTV is quite similar to what happens to bands when they go commercial. It gained a wide-spread popularity and conformed its style to suit the wants and needs of that audience. Too bad that audience consists mainly of the average 16-year-old girl in love with the lead singer of Warrant and Jon Bon Jovi.

The old MTV used to be more like a video WXRT—perfect to turn on anytime day or night. Now, it’s pure Z95—dopey dee-jays and all.

Now, sure, they have Deja Video (Martha’s Greatest Hits) which tries to capture that Closet Classics Capsule presentation that MTV used to have all the time (and they even brought Martha back to host it), but that’s only one show in MTV’s almost fully-scheduled daily line-up.

MTV has devoted so much of its airtime lately to playing celebrity-personality television shows like Club MTV with Downtown Julie Brown, “Just Say Julie” with the other Julie Brown, Kevin Seal: Sporting Fool, Colin Quinn’s Manly World, Pirate TV, and The Ben Stiller show that the videos seem to be taking a back seat.

There’s no reason why MTV shouldn’t fully utilize their 24 hour a day broadcast time and blend together a mixture of post-modern, rap music, new releases, heavy-metal, classic rock and everything else, and play that continuously.

At least that format would provide their audience with something for everyone at practically all times and end the ridiculous repetitiveness of today’s MTV.

And while their at it, they can get Adam Curry to cut his hair.