Here's to you MTV!

Well, its official.  MTV has announced their focus on Millennials, casting aside Generation X… the generation that made MTV.  Sad news indeed.  I’d like to give a big FU to MTV.  Not just for this recent admission, but for the crap they have been broadcasting for the past 20 years.  There was a time when MTV was about music television.  It was certainly a revolutionary, but simple, concept that changed music forever.  Play popular music but with supporting video.  It changed everything.  No longer were we sitting by the radio listening to music while doing something else.  Now we were completely focused on the music as a total sensory experience.  And when I say focused, I mean sitting like a zombie starring at the TV, one music video after another… completely enthralled.  It was a perfect formula and our generation shaped it.

Then something along the way happened.  Something terrible.  MTV changed focus from what made them great, music television, to a soap opera channel.  I blame the Real World and it was all down hill from there, recently culminating with Jersey Shore.  While this metamorphosis was occurring, MTV did still try to retain the Generation X market via MTV2.  This worked for a while but ultimately failed.  I want my MTV!

As I mentioned, we shaped MTV, but in a way it shaped us as well.  It changed how we absorbed music and how we responded to it on a social level.  Do you remember going into school on Monday after seeing the latest and greatest new MTV Video over the weekend???  MTV Network President Van Toffler said “Millennials are really about authentic reality and family” and that MTV “played up the camaraderie and famliy elements on Jersey Shore to appeal to them”.  What???  Has he seen Jersey Shore???  If this is any reflection on what Millennials are about, or if they are at all being shaped by MTV’s content… God help us all.

Certainly on some level I can understand MTV now focusing on Millennials.   They spend the most time in front of the television and apparently care far less about music than our generation had.  I wonder though, would Gen-Xers spend some of our prime time viewing hours watching MTV if there were still something that appealed to us?  Its hard to say because, despite their recent admission, MTV cast us aside many years ago.  So, again MTV… FU.  How’s that for cynical?

~cg

The Slacker Factor Podcast, Episode 4:  Mary’s Gone Slackers

We’re mysteriously hungry for crackers, thirsty for new music, high on caffeine but not motivated enough to get this podcast done in a more timely manner. Subscribe with iTunes

Links:

Meandering Rant on Slacking by Patty Pino

Cool Products Book Report featuring:

• Keurig Coffee Machine
• Mary ‘s Gone Crackers
• Walk Fit Shoe Inserts

Music Segment on Ghostly International and the iPhone application, Ghostly Discovery

Episode 3: Always looking for something else or something other to the somethings we experience every day, we focus on the changed experience of finding new music and the challenges to the way we eat.  We wrap with the Jolly Green Giant’s favorite musician, Scout Niblett.

<Check out Rob’s Why All New Music Sucks, a Meandering Rant from TSF3>

Episode 2: The Slacker Factor team ponders the Power of Tape, the advent of Social Networking with all of its love and annoyances, as well as the music of School of Seven Bells who are aptly named after a mythical South American pickpocket training academy (or so says the all knowing Wikipedia).

<Read pp’s The Power of Tape, a Meandering Rant from TSF2.>

Episode 1: Our first attempt to control the world through the power and not-so subliminal messages of slackerdom. We discuss what it means to be Generation X, our ever so hip fashion, and the “weirdest and stinkiest” underground dance music of Damian Lazarus.

<Ponder the words of cg’s What it means to be Generation X, a Meandering Rant from TSF1.>

Who even knew there was a Generation X in Canada?!?

Apparently, they are also fast approaching 40 and have redefined popular culture and the definition of success. I like it!

Read more at:

http://www.canada.com/look+hits+middle/2063322/story.html

Episode #0 – The Episode before the Episode
A somewhat lame attempt to introduce you to the Slackers behind The Slacker Factor. We did all of this stuff in weird, fractured sessions, as opposed to our usual slick and always-perfect episode recordings. (Do you even, really, care?)

<Without taking a breath, read this episode’s Dust on the Ceiling, a Meandering Rant from TSF0.>