I want my MTV!

[searadiofreak]

Someone mentioned the generational aspect of MTV. I agree. When MTV signed on I was 21. I was fascinated with it for about 3-4 years, then lost interest. If it was doing the same thing today I can guarentee you I would have no interest. Because I'm 51. That is the bottom line.

 

[flashback]

i just think that a station like that that has an anniversary like that should celebrate it.embrace its past.its the right thing to do.

 

[firepoint525]

it was fun watching tonight, but it still would have been better if THE ACTUAL MTV had carried it!

It probably wouldn't have held much appeal to their target demographic, which is pretty much teenagers and twenty somethings. It would interest those folks about as much as an hour of music clips from 1951 would have appealed to me in 1981 (when MTV launched and I was well inside their target demo).

Anyone here remember "Closet Classics"? (I think that was the name of it.) Old "videos," mostly from the '60s. But I remember at least one from Richie Valens, which had to be approaching 30 years old at the time, because this program aired in the late '80s, and Valens had died in the plane crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper back in 1959.

 

[firepoint525]

For me, MTV jumped the shark back around 1986, when they started showing reruns of The Monkees, explaining it away by calling them "the first video band" or something like that. Anyway, it represented one of the first major occasions that MTV ventured away from showing just music videos. It was the beginning of the end. :'( I was 22 at the time, and certainly not an "old fogey."

 

[Bob1370]

Should there be a new song now called "YouTube Killed The Video Star"? Anyone know where the Buggles are now?

 

[imhomerjay]

bongwater makes a good statement.

the point of MTV was music for a generation.i wouldn`t expect to watch it much if it continued with todays music but would be fine.

to me the bad thing is that MTV went from a music channel to whatever it is but anything but music.

Yep... Do you think Snookie and The Situation will be as fondly remembered 30 years from now as Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, and J.J. Jackson?

Yawn....do you think many people under 30 know, or would much care about, the original VJs? (Hint: no.) Today’s audience will remember their pop-culture touchstones in some dusty corner of their minds, just as the first MTV generation did, even if they sometimes struggle to actually recall their names.

It’s amazing, at times, how people fail to grasp such basic concepts as “time moves on.”

When MTV was born, it was hardly etched in stone that the business couldn’t evolve. Technology changes, as to audience tastes…and that dictates following those tastes. They’re a pop culture channel for today’s youth…and all the geezers whining about how it “lost its way” is comical, if a touch sad. It didn’t lose anything—it’s remained at or near the top of entertainment choices for a constantly shifting demographic for three decades precisely by not being stuck in the past. Even as the number of channels out there has increased, what, ten-fold or more by now, they have a track record that, on the whole, is solid when it comes to delivering an audience to advertisers (you know, their business?).

Time for the geezer squad to chew on another bran muffin.

 

[flashback]

as i said before ,in one way or another, on its 30th birthday MTV should have acknowledged its beginning .perhaps an half hour to an hour or so.after all if it was not for the music video format nobody would be seeing the current MTV programs.

its about honoring their heritage.the silence about the event is sad.

 

[hubcity]

I'm sensing an odd disconnect:

MTV's 30th Anniversary: "We can't celebrate the past, because we're all about the now."

That 70's Show: "An hour of back-to-back episodes coming up Friday at 6PM on MTV!"

...huh? I guess history's okay, just not *their* history.

 

[BRNout]

bongwater makes a good statement.

the point of MTV was music for a generation.i wouldn`t expect to watch it much if it continued with todays music but would be fine.

to me the bad thing is that MTV went from a music channel to whatever it is but anything but music.

Yep... Do you think Snookie and The Situation will be as fondly remembered 30 years from now as Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, and J.J. Jackson?

Yawn....do you think many people under 30 know, or would much care about, the original VJs? (Hint: no.) Today’s audience will remember their pop-culture touchstones in some dusty corner of their minds, just as the first MTV generation did, even if they sometimes struggle to actually recall their names.

It’s amazing, at times, how people fail to grasp such basic concepts as “time moves on.”

When MTV was born, it was hardly etched in stone that the business couldn’t evolve. Technology changes, as to audience tastes…and that dictates following those tastes. They’re a pop culture channel for today’s youth…and all the geezers whining about how it “lost its way” is comical, if a touch sad. It didn’t lose anything—it’s remained at or near the top of entertainment choices for a constantly shifting demographic for three decades precisely by not being stuck in the past. Even as the number of channels out there has increased, what, ten-fold or more by now, they have a track record that, on the whole, is solid when it comes to delivering an audience to advertisers (you know, their business?).

Time for the geezer squad to chew on another bran muffin.

Gee homerjay, perhaps you should join them for that bran muffin. After all, your namesake from the Simpsons is some 22 years old now! He's no longer relevant to the texting generation.
;D ;D ;D


I guess the point is that MTV is no longer special to anyone and it's sad for those of us who recall when it was. There's a point to be made that this was inevitable. After all, there are SO many channels out there that the audience is fragmented. Yet there's still something galling about MTV continuing along with that name and supposed heritage while showing what amounts to.....crap. And programming almost no "music". Would it have killed them to spend an hour remembering how they started? Probably not. By the way, the 1951-1981 analogy was poor because music changed A LOT more between '51 and '81 than it has from '81 to now. The Andrews Sisters to U2 is a bigger leap than U2 to, well U2! Anyhow, we get the point he was trying to make - but it's not the same.

MTV yet another example of a cable channel (owned by Viacom - no coincidence there) that should just change its name because the name is no longer relevant vis a vis its programming.

 

[imhomerjay]

uote author=BRNout link=topic=195095.msg1731523#msg1731523 date=1312481741]
Gee homerjay, perhaps you should join them for that bran muffin. After all, your namesake from the Simpsons is some 22 years old now! He's no longer relevant to the texting generation.
;D ;D ;D
[/quote]
I’d fit right in with the bran muffins crowd age wise, and have no problem at all with that fact. But just because I was born in the past doesn’t mean I have to keep living there, whining and yearning for some idealized version of the “good old days.” Not that we see any of that around these parts.

I guess the point is that MTV is no longer special to anyone and it's sad for those of us who recall when it was.

As if a few message board types grousing around is indicative of the entire population. (And special? Really? Sure, some hair groups, boy bands and assorted pop-tarts doing little mini-movies…sometimes little more than unintentionally humorous lip syncing….to pop songs was the special.)

There's a point to be made that this was inevitable. After all, there are SO many channels out there that the audience is fragmented. Yet there's still something galling about MTV continuing along with that name and supposed heritage while showing what amounts to.....crap.

Shocking. Someone on the other side of the hill not understanding the youth of the current day. Gee, that’s unheard of in pop culture history, isn’t it? As if our parents and grandparents, generally, didn’t think the same of the entertainment choices we embraced in our respective youthful days. (And the reason such opinions by the chronically out-of-touch amount to little more than the crazy old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.)

And programming almost no "music".

Does the target audience give a rat’s rear? No. Only people whose opinion is utterly irrelevant and get hung up on the semantics of decades long forgotten.

Would it have killed them to spend an hour remembering how they started? Probably not.

To do what…appease a few luddites? Not killing them and having a valid business reason to do something are not synonymous. A different member of the corporate family handled the retrospective, and given that the core audience wasn’t born in 1981, it’s far more logical than what passes for wisdom around here.

MTV yet another example of a cable channel (owned by Viacom - no coincidence there) that should just change its name because the name is no longer relevant vis a vis its programming.

To make you happy? Welcome to 2011, and new realities of business. The name works for them because the audience accepts it. People who miss their Buggles videos…eh, not so much. Would changing the name but nothing else somehow appease you? (We know it wouldn’t.)

What’s the matter…can’t accept that the young ‘uns have their own version of MTV that works for them, and your idealized vision of the past reveals just how irrelevant you’ve become?

 

[hubcity]

Besides, a quick tune to MTV Hits will clue you in to what MTV would look like today. (Though with less humanity and ID variety.)

 

[flashback]

not everyone can get channels like MTV hits on basic cable and not everyone is ready to pay more to get past basic.

 

[imhomerjay]

Not everyone will ...just as not everyone will buy a higher-end car, or bigger TV or whatever else.

Their job is to do what's best for their business. People will make decisions about what they do or don't want to pay for, and that's fine; it's the nature of the market, isn't it?

So they offer something for those that choose to take it.

 

[firepoint525]

I'm sensing an odd disconnect:
MTV's 30th Anniversary: "We can't celebrate the past, because we're all about the now."
That 70's Show: "An hour of back-to-back episodes coming up Friday at 6PM on MTV!"
...huh? I guess history's okay, just not *their* history.

MTV had a cool (for them, anyway! :) "reality" show, The '70s House, or something like that, back in 2005. They took about a dozen 20-somethings, stuck 'em in the '70s, and took away all their modern conveniences, like cell phones, etc. They also had to dress '70s (polyester, etc.) and constantly drop lingo like "groovy," "foxy," etc. They also had to listen to 8-track tapes and the like. About the only unrealistic part of the show was that they had to "do the hustle" at a moment's notice.

Funniest thing about the show was the episode in which they did they did the beauty pageant. Ashley wore a swimsuit that probably would have gotten her arrested back in the '70s! But she won! And she knew who Foghat was! That was cool! 8)

It's about time for MTV to do an '80s house! Let's see if they would intertwine their own history into that one!

 

[jwgreek8606]

I am 25 and I have respect for the original VJs and I wish MTV was the way it was. I told my dad that it used to not be so nasty. I love 80s music and I have an appreciation for the original MTV.

 

[imhomerjay]

Congratulations.

 

[firepoint525]

MTV hasn't completely ignored its own history. It made MTV news when J. J. Jackson, one of their original vjs, died. He was the one who presided over the "unmasking" of KISS back in the early '80s. (His death had to have been at least five years ago, because I saw it, and it has been that long since I have had cable.)

They also provided some coverage of Michael Jackson's trial back in the early 2000s.

 

[flashback]

that was then.now things seem to have changed.

 

[searadiofreak]

For a point of reference, here is tonight's late afternoon/prime-time lineup...(time zone variables).

"Disaster Date"....several back to back half hours
"Extreme Cribs"....one half-hour
"That 70's Show"...two hour block
"Teen Mom"...one hour
"Jersey Shore"...two hour block

My only comment, what is MTV's preoccupation with teen moms? They also have Teen Moms II, and another show "Sixteen and Pregnant". If their goal is to show how bad this is that is one thing. If their goal is to just show this for no apparent reason, it is stupid.

 

[azumanga]

My only comment, what is MTV's preoccupation with teen moms? They also have Teen Moms II, and another show "Sixteen and Pregnant". If their goal is to show how bad this is that is one thing. If their goal is to just show this for no apparent reason, it is stupid.

If their goal is to glamorise teen motherhood, it is REALLY stupid.