Where were you back on August 1st, 1981? It is safe to say that anyone who was remotely interested in music back then would have been glued to the newest cable channel to hit the airwaves. Yep, I’m talking about MTV. It was everything that music could be and would become. It was visual. It was wild. It was neon… er, scratch that last bit. Regardless, MTV was an immediate hit. If you didn’t have cable, chances are you knew someone who did and you knew what to ask for… “I Want My MTV!”
Twenty three years later, while the name remains the same, the song doesn’t. Gone are the videos that made the station a hit, replaced with voyeuristic trips into rather bland, meaningless and oftentimes, overtly staged, theatrics by twenty-somethings who would do anything to get attention.
Let’s face it, MTV sucks and has sucked for going on ten years. Yeah, I know that MTV2 plays videos constantly, but MTV2 sucks twice as bad. I miss MTV like the desert misses the rain.
Wouldn’t it be great if, through the force of thousands, neigh, millions of fans, we could convince the suits that control the station to push all the schlock to MTV2 and bring back the format that defined a generation? What would it take do you think? A massive drive of people writing in? I’m not sure how to go about it but I know that the blogging community is definitely a powerful force.
If you, like me, believe that MTV is misnamed and only a return to the original format of playing music videos 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year can return the station to its former glory, download then put the image below somewhere on your blog 
(To download the image, using a PC: Right Click, Save As/Using a Macintosh: Control-click, Save Image As), then link the image to this entry. Once we can see how many people are willing to participate in a massive blogger assault on Viacom to BRING BACK MY MTV!
If you care to, tell all your blogging friends and let the word spread like a flock of seagulls… er, or something.
UPDATE: The image is now a .gif file and transparent which will allow you to place it on your blog and it will automatically fit with your color scheme. Thanks to Pylorns for the suggestion. Also, please comment here (or email me: MonkeyDiarist AT gmail.com) and let me know you Want Your MTV Back and that you linked this post on your blog. Thanks!
yeah I was like 3 yrs old. But I did watch MTV like I was set in front of the set from time to time.
oh yeah, make your image transparent or with a black or white back ground not a grey one…
You’re right Pylorns. Set background to transparent so it works with any blog background.
http://www.wetwired.org/2004/09/mtv-where-did-you-go.html
I was two in 1981 and I’ve never had cable, so there is no soft spot in my heart for the late great MTV, but from what I have seen in random snippets over the past few years, I don’t know if playing videos all the time would restore the station to its former glory. From what I can tell, the videos most often played are crappy and unoriginal–a perfect fit to the songs they accompany. Not that I didn’t love my pop music back when I was seventeen, but kids these days have just the worst taste!
I’d hook this up to my blog, if I could figure out how to do it!
In any case, I think it would take a Faustian bargain with Satan himself to get what we want, but I’m game.