I Want My MTV (back)

Scott Ott of Scrappleface fame has launched BoycottMTV. Scott’s motivation is based on his belief that

MTV's slick productions promote sexual promiscuity, infidelity, domestic violence, sexism, and racism. And the audience for all of this, quite intentionally, is children. Your child, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, the students in your classroom, the boy or girl next door, the teen you hire to babysit your children...”

He has a point. Scott’s not asking for outright censorship, merely a boycott of their morally corrupt product. Of course the core issue here (as usual when it comes to talk of censorship) is parenting, but that’s another post for another day…

Discussing this with GF this morning, we were trying to identify what really happened with MTV. Remember when it was cool? Remember “Friday Night Videos?” (those of us who grew up without cable had to settle for that!) I’m not sure if anyone can identify exactly when it happened, but MTV “jumped the shark” when videos slowly lost favor to regular programming. And interestingly enough, somewhere along the way new music started to suck too.

Before you get too upset, I’m not making a blanket statement that ALL new music sucks, just the large majority of it. And I think most people agree – why else are there so many “classic” rock stations repeating the same tired old Steve Miller Band tunes? The music stores are full of digitally re-mastered albums that were originally released 30 years ago. Even the Beatles are still releasing new albums and John & George are gone! Even Disco, one of the most universally hated genres of all time, made a comeback – how else would you explain the Village People’s continued popularity? (Don’t even for a minute tell me you don’t know the Y-M-C-A dance/thingy whatever.)

So, just to recap, MTV sucks. And most new music sucks. Is there a relationship? Maybe not a direct relationship, but I do believe there is a connection. Unfortunately, that’s another post.