1st, to be positive, I agree with Phil when he fearlessly reports that “…the opera house wouldn’t be the cultural cesspool it is today.” Hear, hear. But, quoting Ron, “Don’t get me started …”

As for the pea under the mattress of Todd, perhaps we are experiencing “Global Artistic Cooling…”

Is it real and true or just a perception thing? Heard this before?
(The Princess knew it was a pea. She was a Princess–duh)

We might be losing the language to discuss the “work of individuals” that survives from generation to generation. Art History as told in school uses a picture or two to describe 200 years—then hundreds to explain 30.

Is it possible our youngest and most rebellious, have lost their will to rebel? Today, Artist is another word for Brand Specialist. This is what they are told in Art school. Not much about the font of individuality as the source of inspiration seen through objects rendered by blind determinism.

Perhaps we are in living in a period to be described with a only a 0 (zero) and a 1 (one) and you must be a weatherman to know the wind is not blowing … now. (Unless they’re Idiot Wind)

Gotta cool my tool…

But I can only assume that MTV is not run by artists, so their goal is not great art. This is probably the case of virtually all TV stations. If you’re looking for good art, look for good artists – and realise that the people who deliver the art from the artist to the consumer do it for profit, and that’s probably about it. There has always been that flaw in the system.

My opinion is that if you eliminate as many of these middle-men as possible, your experience will be better and truer – but that’s completely an opinion.

Burn your television.

At some point, I am sure that someone complained that opera and ballet were abominations of the entertainment industry. If only people had listened, the opera house wouldn’t be the cultural cesspool it is today.

That tradition carried through to our modern times and got even worse with MTV. I’m with Todd… before MTV, nobody would have dreamed of image, marketing and visual appearance eclipsing musicianship. When MTV first launched, I had hoped it would have been used to give us more bands like the Monkees, ABBA or the Partridge Family.

Alright, I’m playing Devil’s advocate… MTV helped refine an emerging medium in the 80’s – the music video. They then destroyed it because there were better ways to make money. Video didn’t kill the radio star, but MTV killed the music video star.

Arguably, a non-commercial media service like PBS or NPR is the last remaining POTENTIAL everything-I-need-to-know-in-a-single-channel choice. That or the Trinity Broadcast Network.

…but in the spirit of debate, that channel created the very thing it ruined. Music and culture always did and still does exist outside of it. Plus with all of the available ways to consume “stuff” today as compared to 1982, it seems all media outlets need to specialize – almost like magazines. Is there any catch-all, everything-I-need-to-know-in-a-single-channel left? At our ages, could there be? Anything you can to do to consistently grab a measurable percentage of the viewing public has to be considered a success.

MTV doesn’t even have anymore M in it.