Viacom killed the Video Star
What the hell am I doing up at 7:30 on a non-College Football Saturday Morning? That's what happens when you get exhausted by a short week of work and end up crashing early on Friday night, yeah I know it's pathetic for someone my age. I haven't written about much other than the Lakers lately so I thought I'd switch it up and get onto another subject that I've been meaning to discuss and that is the destruction of music television by Viacom. Viacom is the parent company that owns MTV, Spike TV, Nickelodeon and BET, among others. Viacom brought in the age of the music video and now they have killed the music video.
Everyone knows that MTV went down the tubes years ago when they stopped showing music videos and decided to focus on their reality shows, dating shows, anything else but music. This was fine with me since I don't fall into the demographic of MTV which is 15 year old girls. Growing up in Orange County my local cable provider did not provide BET which is the channel that I really wanted to watch since I'm into Hip-Hop/R&B.
Then when I got to college in Ann Arbor luckily it was on the cable system there so I became an avid BET watcher. BET didn't have all the garbage that was on MTV and they pretty much showed strictly music videos. By this point in time MTV had gone to videos they cut off 2 minutes into each song, for what reason I don't know do the kids have that short of an attention span? BET became my destination for all my music video needs since they showed full videos and I only had to deal with Hits and Big Tigger to watch videos. Once we got DirecTV at my house I could watch BET as well so I had all I needed for my music video needs.
Then Viacom bought BET and gradually started turning BET into MTV. It started with a few shows so it wasn't a big deal at the time. MTV had Cribs, BET started "How I'm Livin." MTV had TRL, BET now had 106 and Park. That was fine, as they still showed enough videos for my fill but now even that's gone. BET made College Hill, which is just like the Real World except these are college students at a HBCU. So BET just turned into an "urban" version of MTV, which sucks.
I really don't have much time to watch TV anymore due to work so I'm not sure what happened to Rap City and all those afternoon shows, especially since I'm on satellite on the west coast which means I get those shows on East Coast time. But the last straw for me is not being able to watch BET when I wake up and when I go to sleep. Not too long ago I could wake up and turn on BET to watch some morning wake up show where they just showed music videos. Sure I normally wake up and sleep to SportsCenter/ESPNEWS like most other guys but I need some variety. Then when I would go to sleep I would turn it to Midnight Love or Uncut with the TV and sleep mode and just crash but now that's gone as well. Now when I wake up in the morning and turn to BET I get reruns of the Jamie Foxx Show, when I go to sleep and turn it to BET I get reruns of the Jamie Foxx Show. Thanks a lot Viacom, bastards. I know cable providers have an MTV Jams network that strictly shows videos only with nothing else but that channel's not available on satellite, damn I wish I had that now. Yet another pointless post from me, if you've read this far what the hell were you thinking? I don't even know how I wrote this much on this topic, man I need a life/girlfriend/football season to come back.
Everyone knows that MTV went down the tubes years ago when they stopped showing music videos and decided to focus on their reality shows, dating shows, anything else but music. This was fine with me since I don't fall into the demographic of MTV which is 15 year old girls. Growing up in Orange County my local cable provider did not provide BET which is the channel that I really wanted to watch since I'm into Hip-Hop/R&B.
Then when I got to college in Ann Arbor luckily it was on the cable system there so I became an avid BET watcher. BET didn't have all the garbage that was on MTV and they pretty much showed strictly music videos. By this point in time MTV had gone to videos they cut off 2 minutes into each song, for what reason I don't know do the kids have that short of an attention span? BET became my destination for all my music video needs since they showed full videos and I only had to deal with Hits and Big Tigger to watch videos. Once we got DirecTV at my house I could watch BET as well so I had all I needed for my music video needs.
Then Viacom bought BET and gradually started turning BET into MTV. It started with a few shows so it wasn't a big deal at the time. MTV had Cribs, BET started "How I'm Livin." MTV had TRL, BET now had 106 and Park. That was fine, as they still showed enough videos for my fill but now even that's gone. BET made College Hill, which is just like the Real World except these are college students at a HBCU. So BET just turned into an "urban" version of MTV, which sucks.
I really don't have much time to watch TV anymore due to work so I'm not sure what happened to Rap City and all those afternoon shows, especially since I'm on satellite on the west coast which means I get those shows on East Coast time. But the last straw for me is not being able to watch BET when I wake up and when I go to sleep. Not too long ago I could wake up and turn on BET to watch some morning wake up show where they just showed music videos. Sure I normally wake up and sleep to SportsCenter/ESPNEWS like most other guys but I need some variety. Then when I would go to sleep I would turn it to Midnight Love or Uncut with the TV and sleep mode and just crash but now that's gone as well. Now when I wake up in the morning and turn to BET I get reruns of the Jamie Foxx Show, when I go to sleep and turn it to BET I get reruns of the Jamie Foxx Show. Thanks a lot Viacom, bastards. I know cable providers have an MTV Jams network that strictly shows videos only with nothing else but that channel's not available on satellite, damn I wish I had that now. Yet another pointless post from me, if you've read this far what the hell were you thinking? I don't even know how I wrote this much on this topic, man I need a life/girlfriend/football season to come back.
posted by Kenny at
7:27 AM
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