Happy Birthday, Change Your Name

Back when I was a kid, when one became 30, one was officially old. Funny how growing closer to, then passing, that milestone makes a person see how absolutely ridiculous the thought was.

I'm sure many of you have read it on the old interwebs. Today MTV turned 30. And you know, in the case of MTV I think 30 may well officially be old.

Well, it's a load of old claptrap, anyway.

See, that's the thing. Almost every article I've read today about the once-gigantic network's b-day has said the same thing. MTV is no longer MTV. And it's not, or at least the MTV we late baby boomers fell in love with.

I'm sitting here looking at MTV on my cable-TV info roll. For the next 18 hours, we have MTV-generated reality shows, a block of repeats of a 10-year old sitcom, and one show that - hey! - almost resembles something having to do with music! A look back at performances at old Video Music Awards shows.

And that's the thing. For a network that calls itself Music Television, and whose stock in trade used to be video music clips, MTV really has nothing whatsoever to do with music anymore. In fact, that they still put on the Video Music Awards is absolutely ludicrous - they don't show videos!

I am one lucky gal. I was there at the beginning. I mean, how my little town, B'field, got in on the ground floor of MTV's birth, I've no idea. Maybe it was cheap enough in the beginning that our cable company thought, "Oh, what the hell..."

I was 21. I saw it, and I loved it. It wasn't polished, to be sure, but neither was I. Unslick video clips, unslick sets where semi-slick VJs introduced those videos and told us a little about the people doing them.

And in fact, for any of you around in the early days - they didn't even broadcast for a whole hour at a time! Twice an hour, the network would go to a break, where standard stock footage of rockets firing would show while generic rock music played.

But for those 40 minutes an hour of music - well, for a girl like me, it was heaven. I saw stuff I'd never seen before. I was discovering people I never knew existed, and was buying records like crazy. (Hey - anyone remember Ph.D - "I Won't Let You Down?" A most obscure song that would have never seen the light of day if not for the old MTV.)

The Go-Gos. Captain Sensible. Devo. The Pretenders. Nick Lowe. Ian Dury. A whole new world was opened to this small-town gal.

Eventually, there became updates once an hour, "MTV News," where we'd hear about our favorite bands. Then, as it caught on, bands would start visiting the set for interviews and silly fun. Silly fun because they figured no one was watching anyway!

Then came more bands to discover. And albums to buy. And bands to see on MTV in the studio. Within two or three years, MTV became a lifeline for folks in small towns like me, with no cool radio stations.

Then - people started discovering MTV. It became the Big New Thing saturating the market. And although I'd watch a good five years more, that's kind of where MTV ended for me.

Michael Jackson made "Thriller." Madonna came along and modeled her career after the music video. Artists thought of their video before they thought of their song. And MTV started to sound just like radio. Which, for me, though I still watched, was the end.

Then, MTV decided to explore. They started making their own shows. "House of Style," and probably what ended it all for them, "The Real World." They saw they could cheaply produce their own shows that people would still watch. OK, we'll still give you your music, but, hey, look at this.

More shows came along, and less music, and then MTV basically died. There were no more blocks of videos, or VJs introducing them, or "Music News." It was, well, it was what we know now as MTV.

So now instead of obscure bands people like me would never hear of, we get to see "16 and Pregnant," "True Life," "Jackass," "Real World/Road Rules 156," "Awkward," and the show that is surely a sign of the Apocalypse, "Jersey Shore."

MTV is not MTV anymore.

But here's another thing.

If they would go back to the original idea, to playing videos all day long, would I care?

The whole thing about MTV not playing Michael Jackson's video turned into a big "they're racist" movement, and I don't know if it was or not, but I almost wish Michael had never made it on the air. Because by playing Michael Jackson's videos, that meant MTV had to play everything else that came out, no matter what the genre.

And so, the big topic - all those people celebrating MTV's birthday but saying, "Give us back our old MTV!"

What if they did that? I mean, if MTV played videos today, what would we have? Rap/HipHop, Country-Pop, TeenDreamShit, Emo bands.... Would I watch? Of course not. None of that means a whit to me. And to be honest, MTV, there's nothing more you can help us discover. There was no internet when you were around in the beginning, we can find any music we want now.

So - what to do? To be honest, here's my suggestion. Just keep MTV what it is now, let it make all the money its officers can hold. But don't call it MTV. It's not MTV. There's no music in it at all.

How about PCTV (PopCultureTV)? CRTV (CrapRealityTV)? STV (ShitTV)?

You decide, MTV.

Just change your name, and leave us old fans with our memories.