Happy 25th, MTV!!!...yeah...right.
That's exactly my feeling of the now mindless corporate entity of Viacom. The vision of Les Garland and company has been replaced by spring break shows, trashy reality TV, and more Laguna Beach than I could care for. But yeah, I do have to still give it to them for plugging into what's hot and what's not in the minds of 10-18 year olds, a demographic MTV is becoming more and more known for. But for you 10-18 year olds, I'm old enough to remember what MTV used to be about.
Bands like Hoobastank, All-American Rejects, and yes your favorite pop-punk gods in Good Charlotte and Simple Plan wouldn't be around if MTV had not put Nirvana on top of the music world with their Unplugged set. Music videos would still be...nothing if Les and a group of guys created MTV. Michael Jackson would not have been...well Michael Jackson if they hadn't aired the 14-minute opus known as 'Thriller' several times a day. Your favorite teen pop sensation would not be the teen pop sensation if not for MTV, and more aptly, TRL. Carson Daly would not be gracing the late-night wars if MTV wasn't around to hire him as the new face of TRL in the mid to late 90s.
There was a time when MTV was considered counterculture and lived up to its billing as a wild child. But as soon as Real World trumped the anti-pop culture of Mike Judge's 'Beavis and Butthead,' MTV has become the exact opposite of what it once was, a rebel in pop culture. No one ever had created a 24-hour music television channel on cable, much less. When it first launched, cable was still beginning, people weren't used to paying for television. But MTV helped cable explode to what it is now. Imagine if MTV didn't exist, never was created; we'd still be watching TV on rabbit ears right now. It helped a bunch of disillusioned high schoolers and college students in the 80s belong with the videos and music. And yes, at one point MTV supported the very group of people that now we at Musiqtone strive to cover: the indie and the underground. Bands like the Dead Kennedys and The Replacements would not be who they are or where they are without MTV.
Now, it's just another network, music videos are all but gone and only digital cable subscribers can see what MTV once was...only if you paid more lip service to a Comcast or WOW to get the MTV video channels. It's been replaced with more Laguna Beach, more Real World, and celebrity-driven shows like 'Pimp My Ride.' Whatever music they show on the mother network is confined to the now contrived nature of TRL, where its spawned an unhealthy obsession over who's hot and who's not. There was a time when the industry wasn't obsessed with top-10 lists, believing that Billboard's once-grand top 10, top 50, top 100, top 200 charts were gospel and the only source to gauge music.
It's become a mindless advertising vehicle for cheap thrills, clothing, accessories, cookie-cutter music acts, one-hit wonders, and their own definition for what's cool. It's now become a controlling entity that tells young people what to listen, what to do, how to dress, and now what to think with their apparent liberal bias when it comes to politics. I still remember when I was a junior in high school and hearing people say they'll vote for Al Gore in 2000 because MTV said it was the cool thing to do and that they told them to do so. I heard it again in 2004 when a group of high school girls would vote for John Edwards because they thought he was cute...and this was after he showed up at an MTV function on TV. They've also turned a generation into an insular bunch, and sure MTV does report news, but its short and it doesn't even inform people of what's going on around them and that usually gets followed by another 'Pimp My Ride' or some other mindless spring break reality show.
You want REAL MUSIC TELEVISION? I suggest you thumb through digital cable listings and find if your WB/CW affiliate broadcasts the Tube Music Network. Now that's music television. Like our motto: "It's about the music, and nothing but the music."
Apparently MTV forgot about that a decade ago.
