The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

It seems clear to me that the biggest sell out of any kind in the last 20 or so years has been MTV. I guess you should take that statement with a grain of salt as in the grand scheme of things it's probably not the biggest sell out of any kind, but it's way up there.

The phrase "Remember when it was all about the music?" actually genuinely applies to MTV. I'm a member of the generation that MTV nearly single-handedly defined, but they've gotten away from that to an enormous extent. On a cultural level they went from filtering the things that were important to the kids to trying to actually be the thing that's important to the kids. It's a huge mistake, in my opinion, but they obviously don't see it in the same way.

The argument from the MTV execs is that their ratings are much better with their no music, heavy reality/pop culture programming. While that's probably true, that's an enormous fucking huge whopping sell out in the truest sense of the term. That's a sell out that trumps Vanilla Ice by leaps and bounds, which had qualified as the biggest in history until about 1997 when MTV began their downward slide.

The is what really upsets me about MTV. There are lots of bands who I grew up with that I came to know by their videos. MTV essentially made the music video a credible way to market a band and in fact made it probably the most important way for a while.

A short list of bands who went from nothing to something or from something to legendary based solely on their videos and MTV: Madonna, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Smashing Pumpkins, Run DMC, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Cyndi Lauper, Peter Gabriel, Dire Straits. There are probably hundreds more who people know of solely on the strength of their videos and not necessarily their songs.

MTV's schedule used to consist of shows like Yo MTV Raps, MTV Jams, Headbanger's Ball, and the highlight of their week was the Top 20 Countdown every Friday night. They had shows where it was just a VJ who would pop on and show a video and that was it. They haven't had a show like that since I would say 1997 with a show called MTV Live which was a little more like the Z Morning Zoo with guests and more talking from the VJs and a small crowd. That MTV Live show evolved into TRL, by the way, which is just insane. I don't recall the last time MTV showed an entire video between the hours of noon and midnight (Don't say TRL, which even cuts off the number 1 video half way through). They've essentially given up on that format.

So MTV made the video the way to promote your band and then also rendered it obsolete. Videos used to make news and define a band and so on. I think the decline of the video has also led to the decline of music recently. I can't think of a so-called "important" band that's out today that hasn't been out since the video era.

MTV used to be necessarily self-important. They made a big deal about their 10 year anniversary and used to take their all time countdowns very seriously. The MTV Video awards used to mean something and the videos that won were actually seen by people. It's no longer important for a band to make a video because no one will see it.

The original Real World show was 100 times more interesting than the current ridiculous contrived version of the show. At the time The Real World was one of the only non video shows on MTV. This is sortof beside my point because as great as the first couple Real World's were, culminating with the San Francisco season, it was the start of the break from their format.

I guess my main point is this. The people who ran MTV in 1986 would kick the asses of the people who run it today. Even the people who ran it in 1996 would rough them up. I don't even know or care if the same people have been in charge all that time. MTV has lost its way and it's not pretty. It's nearly unwatchable now.

I guess the caveat here is that as a 27 year old I'm probably outside their target demographic and so maybe I just don't get it any more. I find that hard to believe, though. And since when I was 14 I watched MTV Jams religiously, I know that today's 14 year olds probably would too. Is TRL really the best representative of today's youth music? That's just not possible. I still love music. When I can find a show that just plays videos I watch it. I don't have a problem with new legitimate artists who could be showcased on video shows.

And don't try to tell me about MTV2, which doesn't even have video shows any more and is buried in most cable packages in the 100s and 200s. There is a station called MTV Hits that I don't get that seems to just show videos, but it's not on my cable package, and I know it's not on DirecTV, so who is getting that station? And that doesn't have anything to do with MTV selling out on their core.