MTV Finds Its Way Back to Music Online... Yawn
Wednesday October 29, 2008
Forgive me if I'm not one of the throng of media observers patting MTV on its collective back for returning a semblance of focus to music through its recently launched online music video feature. That once-innovative bastion of cable TV programming began to turn its back on music in favor of trash pop culture more than 20 years ago, with only intermittent music-focused moments showing up since the heyday of grunge. So this little competitive gesture toward the populist video storehouse of YouTube rings fairly lame when you think about the renegade early days of MTV and its solid grasp on the pulse of new wave and post-punk during the early '80s. So in response to this topic I think I'll choose to echo one of the phrases MTV has so irrevocably forced into the American vernacular: Whatever.
Comments
MTV truly used to be so innovative and stupendous in the early 80s right up to 1987 during the heyday of the post-punk, new-wave, new-Romantic and alternative period.
It went down the dumps in the 1990s with the exception of a few grunge bands. By now the clean fare had been replaced by bedroom farce full of unwanted sex and romp as if you were watching a soft-porn film. If I had really wanted to watch that I would go to a Pussycat Theatre or get a triple X pornographic film. This also went a long way in deteriorating people’s taste in listening to good music and watching classy video clips.
Things became worse with the advent of the new millenium with trashy programmes that had nothing to do with music.
As far as I am concerned MTV has long been DEAD and nothing is going to revive it.