Spottedfeather

I'm seeing all these commercials and news items for the Mtv Video Music Awards, after which I always have the same thought ; why ? Why in the world does Mtv have an awards show for music videos ? They haven't shown many, if any, videos for years. No video channel has shown videos in years. The VMAs are pretty much just sorry, generic, flat so-called music acts that cover up the fact that they can't sing or perform in any reality by having pyro and flashy costumes that even 1970s hookers wouldn't be caught dead in.

dork

How exactly do you know what dead hookers wear?

Locomocha

Many companies make a small number of things that are truly great, truly difficult to create, exceedingly expensive, and which virtually nobody buys. They usually take a loss on designing those things. However, consumers will see the company's brand on this great thing and then go to the store and buy a piece of crap that's indistinguishable from (or worse than) all the other crap out there, purely because of the brand.

MTV is a brand. The brand is supposed to be cool and music-related, because that's what it was when it was created. If MTV phased out music awards and phased in reality TV and game-show awards, not only would viewers not watch it, they'd stop watching the channel! How many people actually watch the MTV music awards? Award shows are boring! However, just knowing that MTV is some kind of judge of what is good and what is bad in music, which is supposed to be cool, makes the MTV brand cool by association. Knowing the brand is cool means you might come back for game-shows that probably aren't even half as good as Jeopardy.

Locomocha

I always thought it was the same stuff live hookers wear, only redder.

The Cow

Not true.

Spottedfeather

Except for an hour or two during the very early morning, I haven't seen a video channel actually play videos for years. What channels have ?

Miss Pris

Probably the ones on your ignore list.

LosingMyMind

The Cool TV shows videos all day, pretty much.

http://www.thecooltv.com/

TomOpus

Zinged by a newbie

LosingMyMind

Because we get things like the *NSYNC reunion. Speaking of which, Joey Fatone is guesting on the new Bloodhound Gang album

UAIOE

I liked that channel. I'm still bummed it was dropped here.

auto

Jason

MTV has several channels that show new videos, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, Tr3s, mtvU. They also feature videos on their website (not to be dismissed easily these days) and, I assume, some sort of mobile app. They've grown into a youth culture empire.

Yes, I miss the good old days too. But MTV isn't for old farts who watched Duran Duran and Rod Stewart videos every Friday night after school any more.

statcat

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UDcfPZOBiow" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

inri222

wishbone

Awesome first post.

TomOpus

They can't all be Jem, eh?

boredsilly

Not to mention that outside of being nostalgic for your youth and when MTV was important to you, would most of the people that talk about MTV not playing videos (which isn't true) watch a video channel that ran vids all day? Because those channels exist as has been mentioned (I have access to about seven channels myself), many of which under the MTV banner. Not to mention things like youtube and vevo.

This argument really is the "get off my lawn" grumpiness for generations X and Y.

Supermallet

Marry me!

islandclaws

I see that MTV is hosting some kind of music video awards show. Remind me, did they used to have something to do with music videos?

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) August 21, 2013

Texan26

Why does CBS show the Grammys? They don't play music. Like Jason mentioned, MTV still has channels that play music videos and music programming 24 hours a day. I know they are available on Comcast. They may be hard to find. MTV Hits is channel 261 here in Houston and it is basically the old MTV but with current music.

MTV Hits on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_Hits

Ropes Pierre

Thanks for reminding me. I have to "do some laundry".

Drexl

No, I probably wouldn't. But, that was a different time.

For one thing, I don't think I could sit through it now. In the 80s, I could watch MTV for a long time and not see too many videos I didn't like. Maybe I'm underestimating the amount of crap they showed, or maybe it's because I was easier to please as a kid, but I wouldn't be interested in a "real" MTV today because I don't care for much of today's pop music.

Also, there wasn't as much access to entertainment then. There were fewer channels of TV, and if you wanted to watch a movie you had to go to the video store to get it (if you even had a VCR, which we didn't have until 1986). We didn't own many movies, as the sell-through market didn't pick up until later in the 80s. There was no WWW, no Netflix, no YouTube, etc. There were video games, but they weren't as immersive, and you had to own the game, borrow a copy from a friend, or go rent it from a video store (and I didn't see renting take off until after the NES launched). And don't get me started on porn!

There's just a lot of more of everything available now, but back then MTV filled a lot of time.

VHS?

There still are music videos being made, just that MTV doesn't show them, ... YouTube does.
MTV has little to nothing to do with music so really they shouldn't be hosting the show.

So maybe they need to start The YouTube Music Video Awards

GuessWho

CBS doesn't show Broadway plays yet their channel broadcasts Tony Awards.