I've Got My MTV

Over the past few years a lot of people have been complaining that MTV is no longer a music channel, that it bears little resemblance to the channel that it once was, and how it should either change its name or just go off the air. Now I can’t dispute the whole MTV isn’t really music television argument because the channel doesn’t have much music programming anymore (although I do find it funny that its biggest program of the year is still the "Video Music Awards"), but I can argue that the channel may be better now than it ever was.

Besides, when was the last time that you heard it referred to as Music Television anyway?

And before I get to the point, my main argument if you will, I’ll just say that MTV isn’t alone. Most networks have shortened their name to a seemingly random smattering of letters for no other reason than to have a cool logo that neatly fits in the lower right hand corner of the screen (and television isn’t the only medium that has gone in this direction: in the last couple of years we’ve seen movie titles shortened for marketing purposes. T2. MIB, LOTR,LOTR:TTT,LOTR:ROTK, and the completely absurd ID4 immediately spring to mind). For example, in the past few years TNN went through several name changes, all while still retaining the same three letters. For years it was known as The Nashville Network and then The National Network. Finally after a short-lived, highly publicized lawsuit from director Spike Lee, the network switched to Spike TV. And through all of these changes, one thing remains constant: nobody is watching the channel except on Monday nights between 9 and 11:05 when RAW is on.

But people are watching MTV. There is still a crowd of people outside of the studios in Times Square when “Total Request Live” (TRL) goes on the air. Now “TRL” is a riot. It is MTV’s daily popular music video request show and the show that put Carson Daly on “the map." They count down the top ten videos and have lots of celebrity guests (I think Christina Aguilera has appeared on the program at least 500 times since 2002). The funniest part about it, and the thing that makes me really love it, is that they rarely show the whole video, opting instead to show a thirty second high-light before coming back on and dishing celebrity scoop or giving news updates. So it is a video request show minus all of the pesky videos.

In addition to “TRL” MTV has many other great programs as well. “Tail Daters,” is a show in which a pair of ex girlfriends or boyfriends will follow or “tail” their former partner while they are on a date. The ex’s are in a van and have a monitor that allows them to watch the date unfold. They also have microphones that allow them to talk to their ex’s date via an earpiece. They’ll often share the most embarrassing information at the most inopportune time.
Ex-girlfriend: “Hey, ask him about his chronic bed wetting and fear of commitment.”
Potential girlfriend, while guy is going in for a kiss: “So tell me about your bed wetting.”
Like the guy stands any chance when he has two of his ex-girlfriends cutting him up.

“Room Raiders,” another dating themed show involves a single guy or girl going through the rooms of three potential mates while being watched from, you guessed it, a van. The guy or gal have to choose who they’ll date based solely on the person’s room. It’s fun to watch as the girls usually find porn hidden under the bed or bookmarked on the guy’s computer, and the guys go straight for the underwear drawer to see what cup size a girl is. And the show has an instant payoff: after the choice is made they go right out on a date.

The network has introduced some other great shows in the past few months as well. These include “I Want a Famous Face,” where delusional people have surgery in hopes that they can look like their favorite celebrity (my favorites so far include a set of twins who wanted to look like Brad Pitt and a transsexual who dreamed of looking like J-Lo), and “Pimp My Ride,” where Xzibit, a “famous rapper” and his team modify a lucky viewer’s beat up car into something that makes the cars in “2 Fast 2 Furious” look like jalopies.

So I ask, with all of these great choices, why would anyone want MTV to just play videos all day?

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