TVSquad

For a few months now, MTV has been showing AMTV, morning music videos with a range of old and new. Let's ignore the repetitive nature for a second. The biggest flaw is that MTV HD shows the videos in the same quality as its non-HD entity, leaving those annoying black side bars. Why aren't any of the music videos on MTV or VH1 in HD?

In a weaker economy where even television programs get budget cuts, music videos are a great alternative to showing programming since the station doesn't pay for them. It's shameless advertising for the musician and a cheap way to put things in HD.

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.