MTV makes a jackass out of itself

Do you want your MTV?\nYou can have mine. I sure as hell don't want it anymore.\nFor four years, I've watched the channel in my attempt to stay attuned to the music world. My brain has melted enough from the prolonged exposure. Whenever I watch the network for too long, I feel myself devolving into a sensory-deprived beast, and nowadays I escape to the Weather Channel for higher quality programming.\nMTV theoretically serves two functions: A channel for music lovers and a voice for the teenage-college generation. Anyone tuning in lately will back me up when I say MTV fails miserably at both.\nMTV does one thing right. It endeavors to give a platform for R&B, hip-hop and rap music, genres snubbed constantly by mainstream radio stations and VH1.\nThat being said...\nIt would help if they ever actually played a video. Everytime I tune in, it's nothing but reruns of their crappy shows or radioactive trash like "Britney's Greatest MTV Moments," a paradox because that implies she's had one. Or how about the Video Music Awards, again, airing at 10 p.m. tomorrow night for those who missed its Sept. 7 debut or one of the 50 rebroadcasts since.\nWhat happened to the M in MTV?\nI finally figured out that they do indeed play videos: at 5:30 a.m. for an hour (when I'm sleeping) and another two hours at 9 a.m. (most likely still sleeping). The centerpiece of MTV's music programming is the teen-splattered top 10 countdown "Total Request Live," for those little tykes who must have scampered out of bed before school to catch the videos at 5:30 a.m. Rather than an entertaining look at today's music, the show is nothing more than a painful display of teenage hissy fits hosted by a brain-dead pseudo-celebrity.\nMTV has become a haven for no-talents. I will pay my week's salary to anyone who can tell me how Mandy Moore -- the most prepackaged phony ever -- gains so much prominence on MTV. Does her daddy own the station? And how did "Tech $," the most annoying character from the lamest incarnation of the "Real World," get to host his own hip-hop music show? The station's producers are either flighty 14-year-old girls (like the TRL audience) or smoking some seriously bad crack. MTV consistently ignores talented mainstream and unknown artists in favor of its core of zeroes.\nMTV's other supposed forte is reaching out to our age group through its nonmusic shows. But these shows are as hard to find as music videos. The channel has the obnoxious habit of airing its programs in chunks, showing the same thing for hours straight. While the first "Undressed" might be a fun thing to criticize, by the 11th episode you feel like you've eaten a 20-piece bucket of greasy chicken in one sitting, just seconds from exploding in disgust.\nThe channel has a misguided pretense of reaching out to our generation. Its latest, fakest effort was getting college students involved with the presidential election with Choose or Lose 2000. Leading the team of well-hired advisers was superstar Jessica Simpson, who stressed the importance of voting, "Ek-specially if you're of age."\nSo if the network decided to make politics a priority, exactly how did MTV reign in Election Day? Why, by running 13 hours of the "Real World New Orleans," of course. What better way to welcome the new president.\nMTV is an enormous void in cabledom whose existence both puzzles me and revolts me. I would rather it go back to airing music videos only. As it stands, the channel doesn't seem to do much of anything.\nExcept keep me irritated.