From imdb.com:

Saying that corporate parent Viacom has lost patience with the underperformance of MTV Networks, the New York Post reported Sunday, citing several unnamed sources, that the company may lay off as many as 500 employees by the end of the week.

Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. In fact, although it’s terrible news for the 500 folks who are losing their jobs, it’s news that excites me. Perhaps this is a move to turn MTV back into MUSIC Television, not Reality / Teen / Gameshow / Anything-Except-Music Television.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a complete music video on MTV without it being interrupted by commercials, “VJs”, screaming girls, interviews, text scrolling across the screen, “interactive” games, or something else that takes away from the initial concept. I used to love watching music videos on MTV… that is, watching videos made around music that I actually enjoyed listening to. Somehow that concept turned into making music that would sound great as the background for a cool video… which ultimately led to music that was used as the background behind really awful television shows involving dating various family members, searching through rooms belonging to members of the opposite sex, or just being plain stupid.

MTV2 was born as a separate channel to bring the music back to MTV. Now, you can’t even find music videos on MTV2 anymore. It’s almost always playing some of the older inane shows that ran on MTV. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a 2 hour block of music at 3am that’s interrupted by commercials between every other song.

With MySpace, YouTube, and iTunes currently ruling the music/video scene, it’s no wonder that MTV is planning on firing a bunch of their staff. Maybe they’ll actually hire someone with some creativity… someone who is daring enough to put the music back on the air like they did initially in the early 80s.

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