MTV was the home of the original acoustic session with the 'Unplugged' series, that gave birth to a whole host of incredible albums like 'Nirvana: Unplugged in New York'.
At their height MTV filled a void which is still missing today, providing good quality music programming. In the 80s and 90s we saw shows like Yo, MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball all filling a cultural void missed by terestrial TV.
So imagine my surprise as I stumble across MTV the other evening only to see 5 minutes of 'Catfish' a show which aims to unveil the true identity of one half of an online relationship that prefers never to Skype or meet in person but claims to be Kate Moss or David Beckham, standard stuff really, although it turns out these people aren't Kate Moss or David Beckham... Like you didn't see that coming.
I checked out the listings, I say listings, it's more a series of shows in one day then repeated, it's more a series of shows in one day then repeated (sorry). If you're big into clips of people falling over you could catch 'Ridiculousness' or better still hard hitting documentaries like '16 and Pregnant'. What's going on?
These shows have their place somewhere on the 999 channels I have access to but not on MTV. Music only makes up about 4 hours of their output Mon-Fri and believe it or not in the UK music has no place on the weekend listings at all?!
The rise of YouTube has given people access to much of what they want when they want it, but the void once filled by MTV has been left, in essence, by themselves, to become just another advocate of Teen drama, like there isn't enough.
MTV have managed to skip an entire generation whose only resemblance to MTV is a vintage T-shirt in their Dad's wardrobe, when MTV should be bringing the music industry to life and setting the standard in music programming.
Now, SSSHHHhhh back to Catfish...
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