VH1

Do you remember when VH1 could actually have some righteous indignation at the way MTV ran it's channel? There was a time in the late 90's (when both stations actually played music) where it seemed like VH1 was a more mature and grown up version of the channel that brought us our Carson Daly fix with TRL. Like VH1 was the 30-something older sibling with kids and a career who could do nothing but roll their eyes when younger-sister MTV showed up on the door step hungover and asking for money to get a new tattoo. When MTV started moving to trashier and trashier programing all VH1 had to do was show another Sheryl Crow video and let Karma come back to bite younger-sister in the ass. But then Karma never came. 

Instead, the two channels have shifted roles. shows like The Hills and Laguna Beach seem downright classy next to VH1's line-up of winners. The fault is in large part ours as viewers. Television programming is based on the principals of supply and demand just like most other things in our economy. So we as viewers told VH1 that we didn't like what they were giving us and they shifted in response. Now VH1 only has 3 different show formats to fill 24-hours of television a day. If you tune into the channel any time day or night you will see one of three things: 

1) pseudo-celebrities like the Snapple lady or the lead singer of Crazy Town (you remember Butterfly don't you?) trying to shake their various addictions. Whether it be food or Heroin we just love to see people who were on the periphery of fame in 1997 break down into tears telling us how hard it is to go out with the old crowd and not shoot up or put down that piece of cake. 

2) re-caps of pop culture through the eyes of comedians who have run out of material. It all started with "I love the 80's" about 5 years ago. Ever since VH1 saw that advertising cash cow it never looked back. Spin offs of what was supposed to be a 10 episode mini-series include: I love the 70's, Best Week Ever, I love the 90's, I love the 80's Strikes Back, I love the 80's 3D and I love the new millennium amongst others.  I love the New Millennium in particular showed just how desperate VH1 was to keep this Format alive. When you have people in the year 2008 saying things like "oh do you remember when everyone used Facebook?" or "Do you remember when that Fergie song- big girls don't cry was popular? looking back we were so young and stupid!" you need to just stop

3) Skanks. Lots and lots of skanks. You know which shows I am talking about. Rock of love with Bret Micheals, For the Love of Ray J, a Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, any show where skanky women with huge breasts or dumb tools with huge pecs have sex with a shriveled pseudo-celebrity bag of STDs to get on TV. This one started with the Mac-daddy of all them all- Flava of Love. Fresh off of his surreal life romance with action-transvestite Bridget Neilson Flava Flav decided to see what would happen when he got slutty girls on TV claiming he wanted to find true love. He ended up having sex with all of them. And America loved it.

Now I am as guilty as anyone else of contributing to the success of these shows (ok not as guilty as ANYONE else... I don't watch any of these shows regularly but if I am bored and they are on I might give them a peek) but we need to do something to encourage better programing on TV. Some other time I will do a post on great shows that were cancelled to early but right now lets focus on getting bad shows off the air by not watching them anymore. Sound like a decent idea?