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Michael Jackson celebrated: MTV style
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As Michael Jackson officially passed, MTV gave up its usual unscripted programming to focus on what's really important to MTV, music videos. That's right, MTV: Music Television returned to pay tribute to the fallen King of Pop by playing all the music videos and performances that made Michael Jackson a true iconic figure in pop culture. It all started early Thursday evening when the news of Michael Jackson's death had finally been confirmed with MTV playing old VMA performance and videos from the early 1990's, along with repeated news inserts reporting that Michael Jackson had died. Immediately at 9pm, MTV had a one-hour live report on Michael Jackson's death with Sheryl Crow, Run DMC, Pete Wentz, Snoop Dogg, just to name a few, calling in to express their condolences and experiences with the King of Pop. Following an original airing of 16 and Pregnant after 10pm, MTV went into news and music video mode at 11pm that would last all night Thursday and all day Friday. In this brief return of MTV: Music Television, Michael Jackson videos from the days of The Jackson 5 to its' present day as a solo artists played on MTV. And every now and then, we saw updated MTV News inserts, with even Kurt Loader (granddaddy of MTV News) doing MTV News Briefs once again explaining how the death of Michael Jackson has had an impact on the music industry and the world. And under these special circumstances, MTV decided not to air commercials promoting its' current reality shows, and just stuck to airing paid spots, which indeed made MTV credible and worth watching again. The biggest letdown was that MTV decided to stick to its' current logo, cutting off the "music television" part of the iconic MTV logo. A simple action like this reminds us that the MTV: Music Television we once knew is officially gone from the landscape, and is only here for this tragic occasion. At one point, MTV inserted twitter crawls from bloggers and millennial celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Keri Hilson; just to name a few, and reinserted commercials promoting MTV's reality shows, reminding us that "we gotta keep it real" and start capitalizing off Michael Jackson's tragedy. And another cruel reality was how MTV didn't stick to its' Michael Jackson tribute throughout the weekend, and at sometime on Friday evening rejoined its distasteful reality shows already in progress. The biggest question we have about MTV, VH1, and BET (all owned by Viacom) is what direction will it go in. Will these networks take a bold step and revert back to its roots to reinvigorate the music industry, holding it to the standard of Michael Jackson, Elvis, The Beatles, and so forth? Or will these channels continue the constant push to create original non-scripted programming, which is more expensive to produce than airing music videos all day, and attract an audience with very little tolerance for substance?
Note: This reporter got invigorated by Britney Spears to watch MTV more often back in January 1999, and remained a loyal viewer until late last month. At one point, I gave up on MTV only to be reinvigorated 2 years ago by MTV's long overdue change of on-air image/ promotion, and by the reason I write articles in the first place: Lauren Conrad
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