bighoss

leighdu

Mtv sucks now, plain and simple. And producers don't too much care because all this garbage has high ratings with all the kids that buy into it. And the sad thing is all the shows have to be about cash, sex, cheating, or they won't get any air play.

djs

MTV is basically a trashy magazine that is on TV. They really have lost their musical tradition which was what made them popular. I guess the producers are only reacting to what the viewers want to see.

bighoss

yep, it is a shame....usually i will watch fuse if i want to see any sort of music video now. of course that isn't real often.

illytodd

I grew up on watching MTV and there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't at least watch a minute of it. I don't know what happened, it seemed after the popularity of The Real World, it became infested with reality shows.

leighdu

Yep, they saw how money they cash in on with the reality shows, especially after The Real World started. I will admit I used to watch the earlier ones, but then they just got so annoying and boring. Now I never turn the channel to Mtv for anything really.

JamAce

I totally agree, MTV wasn't what it used to be, you could barely watch one single music video. I guess the more money the less you care.

Fardreamer

And the worst thing is that reality shows, dollar for dollar, are relatively cheap to make because they start with either non-celebrities that nevertheless look great on camera (Lauren from Laguna Beach/The Hills) or has-beens who need the exposure (Brigitte Nielsen, Flavor Flav) to boost their sagging careers, or they don't require too much in the way of sets, costumes, and special effects. They thus have a high profit margin because there is little overhead and tons of advertising revenue.

Music videos seem to be pretty expensive because I think that the more elaborate ones are like mini-movies and they require residual rights, clearances, and a bunch of other things that reality shows don't require.

Just imagine if U.S. broadcasting standards were as lax as in Europe; we'd see worse dribble on reality shows, and if you think the sexual content (which is tame now) is bad on The Real World now, imagine a less censored version....Ugh.

frankthetank

good points Fardreamer, i never thought about how cheap it is to make a reality show compared to an actual production music video.

Fardreamer

Networks are addicted to these shows because they are so cheap to make. I don't watch them, so I don't know why viewers are so fond of them. To me, the ones such as The Moment of Truth are TV's equivalent of rubbernecking at a car accident scene: you know you're going to see people suffering, but you still look anyway.