Don't Take the Music out of Music Television

BY MILES DUMVILLE

Former host Carson Daily bows his head metaphorically as news spreads that TRL, MTV’s last, dying gasp of music video coverage, will soon be taken off the air. The decade-old show grew in popularity through the years due to its shortened coverage of pop music videos, its celebrity interviews, its studio audience prizes and, of course, its once heart-throb hunk of a host, Daily.

Whether it’s the show’s bizarre, heartfelt cameo appearance in “Joe Dirt” or members of the German pop crew Tokyo Hotel explaining the difficulty of touring in the United States because they “have to play [their] instruments in English,” anyone in their late teens or twenties is guaranteed to have their own special memories from TRL. However, enough with the nostalgia, already!

Let’s cut to brass tacks. The real issue here is that, with TRL cut out of the schedule, MTV no longer plays music videos. In fact, an average joe has a better shot at receiving an audience with a foreign dignitary than catching the even the faintest glimpse of a music video on MTV.
Furthermore, what does this mean for the MTV Music Awards? Now that no music to speak of is being played on the channel, does MTV hold any legitimate credibility to give out awards for music?

Perhaps MTV should turn their coveted music awards over to stations that at least attempt to play music videos, like Fuse and VH1.  Or better yet, just leave it to the Grammys. People seem to have been fine with the Grammys for a long time now. They do a good enough job.

For a while, MTV2 helped fill this paradoxical void. Now, even this lifeboat station has sunk into dark oceans of Ashton Kutcher punking people and asinine not-quite-celebrities quibbling on the “Real World.”

Are there any solutions to the madness? A few come to mind:
MTV should only play music videos.

However, since MTV would never reverse their brilliant evolution due to the probable loss of their viewership and money, a more practical solution might be to change their name to RWTV, Real World Television.

Bad idea. The channel might then be mistaken for something serious and substantive. Perhaps the best solution is to just pull the plug.