57 Channels and Nothing On

While we have increased the number of television channels that we have to watch by fifty times what we had to watch twenty years ago, you would assume that we would have plenty of choices to choose from and control over what we get to watch. However that does not seem to be the case, as most of these television channels are owned by just a few mass media companies, and the few people at the top of those few companies decides what we are supposed to want to watch at any given time. One example that still gets me worked up if I think too much about it is the saga of MTV. When I was growing up, MTV was still Music Television, and it was music videos 24 hours a day. When I would get home from school and on the weekends, I'd either be actively watching waiting for my favorite videos, or at least have it on in the background. As I got older though, MTV begin introducing shows that would interrupt my music video pleasure. As I got older, the shows became more and more frequent, until soon there was nary a music video to be found. Then MTV ran an ad campaign claiming that the music videos were on MTV2, so switch over there if you wanted to still see videos. I happily did. However, MTV soon didn't have enough hours in the day for shows like Real World, Road Rules, and Teen idiot of the week, so they started putting the shows on MTV2. At that point I was done with MTV, and started watching VH1, since they still showed music videos. Soon however, Viacom (the owner of the MTV networks) decided to buy VH1, and it too became a festering cesspool of Super Sweet 16 and Celebrity Rehab shows. Now the last outpost is Vh1 Classic, but they show the same five videos over and over, and they are now also beginning to run 'reality' programming, since there just isn't enough room on all the MTV's anymore.

I guess that's more of a rant than a statement, but it boils down to the fact that despite having a dozen 'music video' stations now, they're all owned by the same company, and since the CEO of said company things reality television is what America wants, then he's going to put it on every channel he can. So instead of having more choice, I find that I have as much choice if it was still only MTV, and none of the other channels existed.

Also not sure exactly where Blue's Traveler fits in, but the video from 1994 gave a good indication of where television was heading, and the Hook still makes me come back...