MTV, formerly a television channel for non-stop music videos, is now nothing but a bucketful of culturally demeaning reality shows.

When MTV premiered in 1981, they urged youth to call their TV companies to demand MTV as part of the program package by singing “I want my MTV!” down the line. Yet, what youth wants today is to call MTV Headquarters and yell “I want my REAL MTV!” The channel has ventured so far from the original idea that youth today must turn to new places for their music fix.

With competition such as YouTube and Vevo, it’s understandable MTV is having trouble finding an audience—it’s hard to beat free videos online. Yet constantly playing reality shows just because they sell will not aid the situation. In fact, it only makes MTV seem more desperate. Sure, shows such as Jersey Shore, Tila Tequila, and the Real World are extremely addictive, but they only grab one’s attention in the same way a train wreck would—you can’t tear your eyes away because of repulsion at what our generation has turned into. MTV should be a place where youth go to watch music videos, not shows where self-absorbed party-goers embarrass themselves. And if MTV’s audience absolutely must get their ‘reality fix’, a new sister channel should be created merely for the purpose of further degrading today’s youth.

To cope with their dropping audience numbers and complaints on the lack of music on the channel, especially after Justin Timberlake challenged them to “play more [explicative] videos!” at the 2007 Video Music Awards, MTV formed a Creative Music Integration team led by Joe Cuello, music supervisor for Pimp My Ride, Making the Band, and the Hills. Yet their strategy involves weaving music into already programmed reality show schedules. If you ever happen to catch an actual music video on-air, it is usually in a condensed split-screen form beside the credits of reality shows.

Most of their focus is competing with YouTube by making their entire music video catalogue available online. Yet what they fail to realize is, although audiences appreciate the service of being able to watch any video they want when they want, what youth, as well as music labels, need right now is a music channel where music is actually played. Bands today desperately need the promotion and music listeners need to stay informed of the music scene.

With so many complaints being made, MTV recently decided to update their logo by dropping “Music Television” from the bottom. The logo now only includes a large capital ‘M’ with a graffiti-like ‘TV’ on the bottom right hand corner. At least we know they’re aware of their problem, but it really makes one wonder when they’ll take away the ‘M’ altogether. It seems to stand for absolutely nothing anymore.