What Happened to MTV?

It's been a while since my last post, and I decided that after so many economic development, finance, and business posts, I'd go a little more light-hearted this evening. Switching gears, I thought I'd delve into the state of MTV today.

As a product of the MTV generation, and as the 80's Dire Straits song goes, "I want my MTV".

I'm not talking about the MTV of today, which should be more aptly named RTV, or "Reality Television," along with most major TV networks these days. No, I'm asking where all of the music videos went. Where are they? ... you know, Music Television, hence MTV.

And how can you have an occasional "Top 20 Countdown" when you hardly -- if ever -- play any music videos? Looking at the channel guide tonight, I see videos come on between 4 and 6 AM tomorrow morning. Rest assured, I'm not going to set my alarm clock.

The music video formula complete with VJ's worked for several years -- in fact, "video killed the radio star" -- but it morphed into the reality TV that it is today. They still make videos, and they're bigger and better productions than when I could still watch them on MTV. So what gives?

(By the way, what happened to "Pop-Up Video" on MTV's sister channel, VH-1? They haven't made a new one in years.)

It seems if Viacom, the owner of MTV, were to completely abandon the idea of playing music videos that some other channel would have been born to do just that. MTV2 was supposed to play music videos all of the time when it was born, but it has grown up to do something different now too.

There's just something wrong about calling yourself Music Television and playing nothing but "Pimp My Ride" and "Date My Mom" and "Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" nonstop.