Reply #24: Consumer entertainment can only degrade [View All]

[tech3149]

Whether it's music or movies or any form of artistic expression, the minute it gets promoted as a commodity it is doomed. As a music fan, I have enjoyed many forms of the art and always found the best outside the main stream outlets. I've seen purists turn against artists that became popular when there was no change in the artists style or presentation.

With respect to MTV, they are just selling advertising, they don't care what they program as long as it brings enough viewers to justify the commercial ad rates. I was a working fool when MTV started, more than a few years older than you, and I thought it was a great thing at the time. In some respects it was. Viewing it from a different frame of reference, it's just another distraction from what really matters and affects our lives.

Captain Obvious says of course MTV sux compared to what it was. Think of it like a drug dealer, you pull people in with cheap and amazing stuff and once they have a sense of brand loyalty or psychological or physical addiction, you yank the earth from under there feet and tell them the real cost or give them skunk weed.