It is Official...MTV Sucks Big Green Donkey Dicks
 

For the first and last time in my life, I watched the MTV Video Music Awards tonight. MTV made a powerful statement tonight. The statement was as follows:

"We don't want relevance. We don't want poignance. Talent is immaterial. Give us rap, R&B, hip-hop and tits, tits, tits, and you shall be duly rewarded. No one with any money to spend gives a rat's ass about some old fuck country crooner or his life story. No one is interested in depth, no one cares about content, and in fact, we're a little bit offended that anyone dared think otherwise. Meaningful, insightful videos? The only insight we're interested in is the kind of insight that gets us another look up Beyonce's crotch during a major dip move while lip-syncing a dance number."

As you can probably tell, the Johnny Cash video 'Hurt' was all but shut out tonight, winning an award for, of all things, cinematography (the video was mostly a collection of old Cash clips interspersed with film of Johnny sitting in his living room, emoting his heart out to the camera).

Justin Timberlake showed at least a little class when accepting the Best Male Video award by saying that it was rightfully Johnny Cash's.

He was right.

It's sad because you expected something different.

Wrong...I *hoped* for something different.

I guess I thought that MTV might have had some modicum of self-respect and decency left over from the days when a video was allowed to have something to say besides "give me more money, ho's and dope while I kill yo' mama and them pigs over there."

I was wrong. Sue me.

Time for a Violent Femmes sing along.
I hate the tv
I hate the tv
I hate the tv
I hate the tv
y'know that it's killing me
y'know that it's killing me

I believe viewers vote for the videos, so it's not like MTV really had much to do with it. Regardless, they are shitbags.

I thought the viewers only voted for the viewer's choice award?

I do not believe that is the case, because that used to not be the case. The last time I voted was in 1994, and you could call in and vote on them all.

I sit corrected...

Remember when the majority of MTV's programming was music videos? Same with VH1?

Fucking Viacom...can't completely fault them though. They probably make more money on MTV with its current programming than they ever have.

Wait -- MTV still shows music videos?

I thought they were now a 24-7 "No Resemblance To The Real World" network, with occasional breaks for "Jackass" and "The Osbournes."

If you want to see good videos, check out MTV2 (which is currently being pulled under by 'normal' shows) or, even better, MuchMusic, which I believe is Canadian and definitely does not take itself very seriously.
MTV reminds me of a different V.Femmes song:
America is....
America is....
America is the home of the hypocrite,
America is the home of the hypocrite

Generally between 2-6am Eastern Time. VH1 does the same thing.

I think the end of heavy video programming started in the early 90s. Sunday was usually a non-video night for MTV anyway (at least in the late 80s and early 90s) as well as the 7-8pm ET hour, but once "The Real World" and "Beavis and Butt-head" started, the programming went downhill, IMO.

When I was away at college (1994-95), they still showed mainly videos, except for the afternoons (1-7p). By 1998, videos were almost all gone.

I've noticed MTV2 being given MTV shows now...that pisses me off...what was the fucking point of M2 if you're just going to show more goddamned shows?

Satellite/dish folks can get MuchMusic USA, which is pretty good.

For me, MTV reminds me of that Dead Kennedys song...

"MTV get off the airrrrrrr!"

I just think they need to go ahead and acknowledge the accumulated changes they've made over the years and call it "Rap, Titty and Fucked Up People Doing Stupid Shit TV"

You worry me, Elpsode. I'm getting the feeling you strongly dislike titties and rappers.



In all seriousness, what's changed? Hasn't the "underground", "counterculture", or just not mainstream music been "better" for some time now?