TVSquad

The stunning news yesterday about the death of Michael Jackson conjured up many memories of the singer for me, as I'm sure it did for most people. For many of us, there was never a time when the Jackson Five and Michael were not part of pop culture. Little Michael and his brothers on The Ed Sullivan Show, their funky outfits when they sang on The Flip Wilson Show (much cooler than the Osmond Brothers!), Michael as the Scarecrow in The Wiz (a hideous movie, but he was quite good).

Well after leaving his brothers to become Michael Jackson, solo superstar, Michael hooked up with Paul McCartney for a couple of songs, "Say, Say, Say" and "The Girl is Mine." The latter was okay, but the former was terrific. They co-wrote it and it reached #1 on the charts in 1983. Those were the times when MTV really showcased music videos and the artists and labels invested in top-notch productions. It was, if you will, the golden age of music videos!

The death of Michael Jackson is a stunning blow to the entertainment medium. You'd think upon someone's death, the media could forget all the negative stuff for at least a minute and focus on the positive of their life. But apparently not. So when I got sick to death of Fox News and everyone else going on and on about the child molestation charges and the plastic surgery and all the other weird stuff we already know Michael Jackson is infamous for, I thought I'd check in with MTV.

Surely, considering his importance in the music video format, MTV would have a response. And it would mean a break from their glut of reality crap. What a pleasant surprise to see a marathon of Michael Jackson videos. This is how I want to memorialize a music legend. No matter what he did or didn't do with his life, the music will always be his legacy. Thank you MTV (I can't believe I'm saying that) for eulogizing Michael Jackson in the only way that truly matters. With his artistic genius.

As a child of the '80s, I remember when MTV was just music videos 24 hours a day. We had veejays to love and the different "shows" were just ways to package genres of videos. Times were good and MTV spurred album sales as we discovered music we loved. But all that went away for a long time. But recently, MTV made a big deal about bringing back music videos. Sure it's on at like three and four in the morning, but that's what DVRs are for.

So I record AMTV and AMTV2 (MTV2 got into it as well) for a few weeks and it's even worse than my local pop station. Eminem's "We Made You" was played every single hour on the hour for four hour straight. It was almost as bad for Britney Spears' "If U Seek Amy" and "Poker Face" by Lady GaGa Okay, I get that. New videos and the like. But then they showed me something called a "Video Flashbacks" and I got excited. 30 years of videos to choose from, alright! How can this not be awesome? I can put up with new video repeats for glimpses of videos past!

Did you watch MTV this morning? If so, you were probably surprised to see what some of us aging hipsters used to call "music videos" airing in between all those Proactiv commercials and MTV News breaks.

The network, now known for pseudo-reality shows like The Hills and The City, is finally going back to devoting a good chunk of airtime to music -- that's what the "M" in "MTV" stands for, kiddos! The network kicked off "AMTV," a six hour block of music videos and news, early this morning. "AMTV" will air from 3 to 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday and will mix celebrity interviews, taped live musical performances, promos for shows like the revamped MTV Unplugged and, yes, music videos, among other segments.

I guess the real news should be "MTV's Total Request Live is still on", because I -- and anybody else that is over twelve years old and/or doesn't listen to the Jonas Brothers -- had definitely forgotten about it. Really, what can be said about a program that started going downhill after Carson Daly left? The show will attempt to go out with some semblance of a bang in the form of a two-hour Saturday afternoon special next month. I'm not sure if anyone will cry, but I can almost guarantee plenty of unnecessary gyration and poorly-wailed lyrics.

I'm one of the many people who laments the "channel drift" that has affected MTV. A network that started out as, well, "music television" has clearly become "anything but music television." There's even a graph now on GraphJam the depicts how The Real World caused the downfall of MTV. The graph shows how the airtime for music videos has decreased as The Real World grew in popularity. Perhaps it should also measure how the cast of The Real World became more attractive and subsequently less intelligent.

The graph posits that by 2010 music videos will be nonexistent on the channel. Also, interesting is the rise of what the graph calls simply "other crap" that coincides with the rise of shows like The Real World and Road Rules. I assume "other crap" refers to shows like The Hills, My Super Sweet Sixteen, and Made -- shows that have replaced music videos in primetime (and replaced music videos with their incessant reruns in daytime).