Music Television as Musical as Taco Bell is Mexican

I am as much a fan of MTV and VH1 as anybody. I am currently fascinated with Celebrity Rehab, and who didn't watch Tila Tequila's Shot of Love. But these shows should not be the death of music television. A more accurate name for MTV and VH1 would be RTV, Reality Television. Let's evaluate the programming schedules of these channels.

Today on VH1, February 12th, 2008 - From 3 am to 11 am was the slot allotted for music videos. Every other time slot (Flavor of Love 3, The Salt 'N Pepa show, My Fair Brady: Maybe Baby?, Free Radio, Scott Baio is 46 and Pregnant, Celebrity Rehab, Rock of Love 2, VH1 presents Britney's secret Childhood (I'm not going to hyperlink all of those because I'm lazy, but they're all on the VH1 website)) is a reality show with the exception of Free Radio (a mockumentary), and the Britney special presentation, which may as well be a reality show. The reality shows aren't even music related! What do a model and Peter Brady have to do with music? (By the way, it's no mistake that VH1 scrapped it's motto, "Music First" in 2003).

But the mother of all "musical networks" is worse. The original. There is less than 5 hours of musical programming on MTV, unless you consider Making the Band and America's Best Dance Crew musical programming. I'm even being generous with that statistic, because I'm considering TRL a music show, even though it shows about a minute of every video they play. Even MTV2, which was originally created for this problem, has shifted to airing the reruns of the shows of MTV as well as original programming.

Although not in my demographic, CMT and BET have also followed suit. However, to be fair, BET doesn't have "Music" in their title.

It's true, I love some of this programming. But shouldn't there have been another channel made for this? Shouldn't music television be left to its own? Aren't the conglomerates that own these channels also the owners of multiple non-music related channels? My love for music outweighs my love for seeing C-list celebs battle their coke addictions. But fear not, there are options music lovers! Unfortunately... most are going to cost you.

There are many music channels on extended digital cable packages. Fuse is very good about playing music in time-slots that normal people are awake. Additionally, they don't limit themselves to mainstream acts. Unfortunately, this often entails a large amount of emo music. Additionally, they have begun to go in the direction of MTV and VH1, with original programming. However, a complete 180 from these channels, they usually air them during weekends and the late night slots. MTV has also thrown us a line with MTV Hits - 24 hours of music videos. This is an attempt to silence the critics, such as myself, but also not readily available. MTVU is also almost solely devoted to music, and this is a personal favorite of mine because it features non-mainstream acts. However, it is mostly limited to college packages and campuses.

Unfortunately for myself, here at my apartment in Madison, we have a digital package that features no musical benefits. The dorms receive MTVU, for which I am extremely jealous. For now, I can only get my music fixes from when I visit home, being awake at unholy hours, and the wonder that is known as the Internet. Oh, well.

To keep with the theme, today's song of the day will be "TV" by Headlights. The line is actually "I cannot stand to watch the TV", so it fits well. For more information on Headlights, see my earlier post on my top five bands with multiple lead singers.

"TV" by Headlights on YouTube.
Headlights on Myspace.