Madonna was narcissistic, Kanye demonstrated he knows no limits, the Michael Jackson tribute was lacking oomph, a neutered Russell Brand was strangely unfunny, but none of that truly mattered.\u00c2\u00a0 What we saw last night was a television network that was once different, playing to a disenfranchised younger generation, employing the same damn playbook as the networks.\u00c2\u00a0 And have you caught the networks’ ratings recently?<\/p>\n
In an era where the niche is king, where the mainstream is shrinking, MTV tried to be all things to all people.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a cheerleader being nice to the nerds for a few hours.\u00c2\u00a0 But didn’t MTV get the memo, THE NERDS RULE!<\/p>\n
MTV established a monoculture.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no longer an underground, there was no FM to compete with AM, it was what MTV played and everything else, winners and losers.\u00c2\u00a0 And to think it was about music is to believe visual stimulation holds no weight, that seeing Britney Spears shake her hips titillates you not a whit.\u00c2\u00a0 MTV was the paragon, driving hell-bent into the distance, defining youth culture, for those truly young and those who desired to be young.\u00c2\u00a0 But, MTV never saw the cliff ahead, never saw the nascent Internet, a village off to the side.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the whole entertainment industry didn’t see the Internet and still doesn’t.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, we’re back in the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re either with us or against us.\u00c2\u00a0 Either you’re wired or your irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Either you can tweet, update your social networking site and text all at the same time, or you’re hopelessly out of date.<\/p>\n
Facebook and Twitter are tools.\u00c2\u00a0 Frameworks wherein individuals place their content, not for everyone, but for their accumulated mass, which could be two or three or a few thousand, but which is rarely millions.\u00c2\u00a0 If Whitney Houston can be all over mainstream media and only sell three hundred thousand albums in a country of three hundred million, do you really think the mainstream counts?\u00c2\u00a0 The mainstream has become a sideshow!<\/p>\n
We had VJs fawning over irrelevant pop stars.\u00c2\u00a0 Lady GaGa changed outfits so many times she insured she was perceived as a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, she could barely talk with her neck propped up in a medieval torture device and one eye covered like the Phantom, and when she won her damn award, she had to pull off her Spider-Man mask to speak.<\/p>\n
Green Day and the house band proved that music doesn’t work on TV.\u00c2\u00a0 And Muse was just a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 Real band, trying to merge old with new, refuses to lip-synch so ends up sounding terrible on TV.\u00c2\u00a0 Did Muse really need this opportunity? Does anybody need TV?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t they see that you’re inherently subservient to the medium?\u00c2\u00a0 That television flattens everything, that all content is grist for the mill?<\/p>\n
Madonna, barely looking like herself, made her Michael Jackson tribute about her.\u00c2\u00a0 Like we still care about what she has to say, like we’re still in thrall to her throw it all out there, be naked, manipulative persona when millions are revealing their truth online, girls are e-mailing topless photos, it’s like grandma showed up to scold her grandkids, telling them you’ve got to do it her way, dammit.<\/p>\n
Kanye…\u00c2\u00a0 All the celebrities castigating him today.\u00c2\u00a0 You won’t stand up for health care, you won’t risk alienating a single potential fan, but you pile on Kanye when the audience knew he was an egomaniac with no limits years ago?\u00c2\u00a0 This is news?<\/p>\n
No, this is the kind of moment MTV lives for, the unscripted.\u00c2\u00a0 But we used to have RuPaul in a tete a tete with Milton Berle.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, we’ve got someone who loves the spotlight so much I’m stunned he doesn’t go door to door, telling everyone how fucking great he is.<\/p>\n
Janet Jackson…\u00c2\u00a0 Explain what your talent is again?\u00c2\u00a0 You shook your surgically enhanced breasts and shapely body to beats crafted by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, you’ve got no innate talent.\u00c2\u00a0 As for those dancers replicating Michael Jackson’s moves to the big screen presentation of "Thriller", it reminded me of nothing so much as a screening of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show".<\/p>\n
And the closing moment with Jay-Z?\u00c2\u00a0 This is supposed to drive patrons to the live gigs?\u00c2\u00a0 Explain to me how this works in an arena again?\u00c2\u00a0 People go to share what the albums mean to them, feel the energy, but what comes out of the speakers…is barely comprehensible.<\/p>\n
And Green Day complaining that MTV should play more videos?\u00c2\u00a0 Even Tom Freston, who ran MTV, told me years ago that MTV was never going to play more videos, that clips were an on demand item on the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 He got fired, but do you really think people are going to sit in front of the box and wait for their favorite video to appear?<\/p>\n
Kings Of Leon were nominated, but they didn’t win.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they’re not visual enough, on MTV it’s about train-wreck, not music.<\/p>\n
Wilco, the critics’ band, they were nowhere in attendance either.<\/p>\n
Rather this was a party.\u00c2\u00a0 A made for television event.\u00c2\u00a0 With sponsors woven into the script (Verizon Wireless anyone?) so a big bad corporation, Viacom, can add to its bottom line.\u00c2\u00a0 But have you checked Viacom’s bottom line recently, it’s awful!<\/p>\n
If you thought the show sucked, you’re right.\u00c2\u00a0 But what you fail to grasp is the silver lining inside all this crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, if it’s this bad, what are the odds something better will appear?<\/p>\n
EVERYBODY knows the show sucked.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just a Sunday night diversion.\u00c2\u00a0 With trained seals clapping at appropriate moments to give you the impression that what was going on was important, like on a game show.\u00c2\u00a0 But it had nothing to do with music.<\/p>\n
MTV is about fame.\u00c2\u00a0 For a while there, the two merged, music and fame were interwoven.\u00c2\u00a0 But then fame came to rule. Look good, be a pawn in our game and we’ll hook you up with songwriters and stylists, we’ll create a product that will make you famous!\u00c2\u00a0 But is that really why anybody picks up an instrument?\u00c2\u00a0 For fame?\u00c2\u00a0 Is there no reward in music?<\/p>\n
Today, when the fame game pays fewer dividends than ever before, we’ve got whores who are trying to hold on to the little that’s left of the old paradigm, and newbies who’ve chucked it all, who are trying to make it on what comes out of the amplifiers, not what you see on the screen.\u00c2\u00a0 The only people who have not caught on are those in the mainstream media, flogging each other’s products like they truly matter.\u00c2\u00a0 But if NBC is putting Jay Leno on in prime time, and can make money and will be satisfied with a 1.5 rating, which is fewer than 2 million households, does it really make sense to overpay to produce this tripe that so few are truly interested in, that generates less revenue than ever before?<\/p>\n
It’s about music.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about generating an audience the old-fashioned way, through hard work and what comes out of the speakers.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting lucky on TV doesn’t work, because no one’s paying attention, the active audience is in front of the computer screen, or focusing on their phone as opposed to passively sitting in front of the box.<\/p>\n
That’s the revolution the oldster media just doesn’t get.\u00c2\u00a0 The days of passivity are done.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got an active audience. Which is engaged by truth.\u00c2\u00a0 All we saw last night was phoniness, an irrelevant train-wreck with the nutritional value of Froot Loops.\u00c2\u00a0 You didn’t miss a thing.<\/p>\n
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