I was just inspired moments ago to write this post by a comment made by one of our readers. A comment that was left on my last post, an article about Paris Hilton’s new, uninspired, braindead stupid reality show. There one sentenced response spoke in volumes: “This is why nobody with half a brain watches MTV anymore.”

MTV’s top “minds” have forgotten many years ago that MTV stands for “Music Television”, not “Mindless Exploitation of Rich Vain Teenage Girls Television.” Mind you, that sentence was half-assed, and yet those few seconds I took to think it up was more time than what MTV gives to coming up with their lamebrain schedule, which seems to mostly consist of “reality” shows. And I use the term “reality” rather loosely. Whatever plain of existence the girls of Laguna Beach think they live on, it isn’t reality.

And I’m going to be honest with you, I did watch Jackass. I did watch Viva La Bam. And I most certainly watched Beavis and Butthead with the biggest smirk on my face. Why? Because I found them entertaining. I was a child when B&B ruled MTV, and I was a teenager when Johnny Knoxville and his renegade crew of immature misfits strutted their vulgarity to the lowest levels of crudeness. While I did do a small amount of stupid stunts in my high school, Jackass never had the affect on me as it did on some other people my age. But rest assured, those were the only shows that have ever been placed on their schedule that I gladly dedicated my free time.

Throughout my life, I have briefly tuned into TRL when nothing else was on and slowly watched as the channel’s taste in music declined, along with their respect for it. They would play forgettable pop song after forgettable pop song, and when they reached a song I did like (”It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi, for example-yes, I liked that song), they would skip it for lack of time. What’s the point of having a top 10 list of songs if you are only going to play 8 or 9 of them? And then they rarely showed the entire music video,  and would interupt them in the middle to show Kaitlynn from New Hampshire screaming some indistinguishable rant at the camera as she stood outside with hundreds of other teenage girls and boys, but mostly girls, who had nothing better to do but stand outside of the MTV building.

And then, one day I turned MTV on and reality based shows had completely swallowed the channel. Sure, the Real World had been around forever, by that point, but now we had Jessica Simpson as a newlywed, Ashton Kutcher “punking” people, girls searching loser’s rooms to pick a date, and then it happened! And by “it,” I really mean Laguna Beach and The Hills, two shows that openly display the worst traits that I have seen in girls that I have almost dated, not to mention, girls I have worked with and gone to school with.  And teenage girls get sucked into this stuff. They actually dig it! I guess, these over-dramatic high school chronicles are what kids get into nowadays.

And that’s what has happened to MTV. People continue to tune it, and MTV caught on and gave them more and more and more, leaving some of us sick and others satisfied.

At one point, MTV 2 was established and was essentually the old MTV, and by that I mean, it was all about music. But, from what I understand, MTV 2 is now heading in the same direction, as well as VH1, a channel I used to retreat to for my music needs, but has since gone “reality” with the Surreal Life and many diferent celebrity-based Osbourne-like shows.

In fact, channels selling out their initial audience isn’t an uncommon practice. FX and Cartoon Network have done it the past as well when they ditched their classic shows/cartoons theme. It’s all part of change, and I guess while I may still be young I’m already getting to the point where “things were better when I was younger” and I’m sure that several years from now when these teenage grils watching MTV grow into their mid-twenties, they are going to say the same thing when MTV drops it’s current fad and buys into a new one.

Readers, I want to know what you think of MTV in it’s most recent years. Do you still watch it? Have you ever watched it?