MTV Music Awards, Still About The Music?

Hey Guys!

Well, thank you for your many comments on last week's post of my hilarious (As you say) analysis of the political landscape - I am thrilled that you enjoyed the spirited escapade and look forward to many more light hearted, entertaining discussions - political in nature.

Ready for another great week?

Students have returned back to school, the weather is cooling down, and the political season continues to heat (We only have another 8 weeks of political hyperbole), and Sports Fans - this is your time as you have MLB, WNBA, and regular season NFL action (The men in my life are rejoicing with glee, my special one in particular who loves everything and all things sports).

Speaking of return...

MTV's Video Music Awards

Last Sunday, MTV aired it's 25th Annual Video Music Awards show with the likes of the Jonas Brothers (More on this later), Rihanna, Pink, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and other performers Du jour.

Although I was not intending to watch the live (tape delayed) broadcast of the show, we happened to have arrived home just in time at the exact start of the show. As mentioned within previous posts, I do not usually view programs in real-time thanks to TIVO. However this may have been a special occasion.

The Real Music
Just as you, I literally grew up watching MTV. The small town in which I lived, did not really have progressive radio (Meaning, most of the music was largely one Adult/Pop station, one Rock station, and one or two News stations).

The stations in my town were programmed by older adults, who really had absolutely NO clue as to how to appeal to a younger audience - it was clearly obvious. The Program Directors were primarily interested in appealing to advertisers, rather than an audience of young adults.

Having said, I learned different genres and diversity of music all by watching MTV.

My favorites as a kid were largely derived from the popular videos on MTV - Wham, George Michael, Duran Duran, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, Culture Club, Pet Shop Boys, Billy Idol, LL Cool J, The Police, Devo, Run DMC and a ton of "One Hit" wonders. Back then, MTV was our 'Pilot of Cool' and could not do anything wrong for our young and ever changing youthful ideas...

Quite frankly, if you were a musician and did not have a video on MTV, you simply did not exist. The same is true even more today and times have changed right along with musical style and genres.

25 Years of Music on Television?

During the performances of the show, I smiled nearly the entire time during the short period I had viewed the program. My amusement was due to the fact that most of the performances were live representations of videos - of which I had seen on another network (Vh1).

As you may recall just as many others, I have commented on the fact that despite what was once the past cornerstone of programming, MTV does not really play videos in today's landscape.

Similar to my comment above about Program Director control over airplay for the sake of advertisers, is it possible that today's youth just do not demand or consume video content or perhaps the corporate version of MTV is experiencing the same advertiser pressure.

MTV is now associated with shows: The Hills, Busted, Rob & Big (Love these guys!), Cribs (My FAVORITE show), My Super Sweet 16, and the provactive documentary series True Life.

Moreover, videos are now largely broadcast on sister station Vh1 - Which is rather coincidental as now as an adult, I watch Vh1 in the morning specifically to view music videos. So you see, even some 25 years later, MTV is still in my life - just in a different form...Amazing!

Quite frankly, MTV (Originally calling itself Music Television) has since relinquished its branding aspirations to just MTV - the point, being Music Television may require you to actually have music related programming, right? With the revised moniker, it is short, sweet and does not require qualification for an entirely new generation of MTV heads.

Perhaps, the awards show should be moved to Vh1 and termed, "The Vh1 Music Video Awards", since Vh1 is actually airing regular music video content (During the morning block segments, of course)...

*The above "Moonman" is provided by MTV Networks, Viacom, Inc."