I want my MTV get off the air!

So, you don't like MTV, then?

If you really knew me, you'd know that...I have a complicated relationship with MTV.

At least once a year, I suggest to my students that they should be watching MTV regularly if they're not already.

Their reactions:

• 50 per cent: "Yay!"
• 50 per cent: "Groan!"

I feel their glee and agony.

The Hills are alive with the sound of Spencer

The reason I suggest students watch MTV is that the network has had a damn successful track record of predicting the future of TV while capturing and engaging the youthful audience so near and dear to advertisers' hearts.

Say what you want about The Hills, but its product and song placements and "is-it-real-or-is-it-fake" aesthetic predicted a future in which people wouldn't watch ads, so product and program content could only become one and the same.

Clever. And stupid!

The first time I ever saw The Hills - episode one, season one! - I knew I was watching something new and groundbreaking and that it was going to be huge:

• "What's with the long pauses?"
• "Why am I watching this woman clean out her closet?"
• "They display the background songs with subtitles?"
• "Why doesn't anyone make reference to the cameras?"
• "Is this scripted?"

I also admit to crying with laughter at the evil exploits of one Spencer Pratt. He eventually wore out his welcome and called out the show for being "fake," but for a period of two or three seasons, he was the best villain on TV.

Pratt is right.

MTV invented reality TV with the Real World (a show I still watch and love) and has taken it to a new level with Jersey Shore. "Fascination with the abomination" doesn't begin to sum up how satisfying it is to see this group of idiots party and fight on a weekly basis.

And a special shout-out to Jersey Shore's The Situation: reality TV's own The Fonz is an instant laugh line in class when we learn about how to write the Situation Analysis.

"Whoah - these girls are grenades, dawg!"

I also admit to having been a massive fan of Beavis and Butthead, who never did induce me to play frog baseball, and an occasional fan of dumbass Jackass and My Super Sweet 16 - the show that proves there's nothing more fun than watching a spoiled and self-obsessed rich kid have a meltdown after "only" being gifted a new Toyota on the eve of his or her 16th birthday, the ungrateful jerk.

Today, I'm hooked on Teen Mom, included on this week's EW Must List for being a "heartbreaking, fascinating docuseries" (it is!), and If You Really Knew Me, a show about clique-busters visiting high schools and making students confess and cry in front of each other so they can (ostensibly) get along better in the future.

Shameless and entertaining? Taste great together!

I want my MTV - 25 years after the fact!

On the other hand, I have a deep-seated anger toward MTV, which started when I was just 14 and these ads started running on other TV networks:



The pull was so powerful, I knew that I wanted my MTV too! But, in Canada, you could call your cable company and demand your MTV until you were blue in the face - it just wasn't going to happen for, oh, 25 years or so.

Desperate to see MTV in an Internetless world we didn't create, a friend and I tracked down a family friend who serviced satellites for a living, and he took pity on us and let us watch MTV at his company's headquarters, where we drank our volume in Coke and watched music videos - any music videos! - while he fixed satellites.

As I say, it took 25 years for MTV to come to Canada, and it's a watered-down schedule at best that seems to consist of just one or two programs rotating 100 times a day.

All of the music-based programming that happens on MTV in the U.S. can't happen in Canada, thanks to the station's broadcast license and our good friends at the CRTC, who I hope never start "caring" about the Internet the same way they "care" about TV.

And don't get me started on that lame-arse MuchMusic, beholden to Newlyweds, Pimp My Ride, and Video on Trial (with the exception of Trevor Boris, my good friend who was nice enough to give me a shout-out on his DVD).

The oft-heard complaint that MTV "never shows videos anymore" is also true, but it's for a very simple, practical reason: despite music being "the international language," it's also the most fragmented form of entertainment, to the point that no one can agree on what constitutes "good music" anymore.

My cousin, a former president of Sony Canada, once told me that MuchMusic's ratings were so low in 15-minute increments, they were unmeasurable by BBM. It's not surprising that people would tune in for three minutes to see "All the Single Ladies," then turn the channel for "MmmBop" or vice-versa.

If you can't measure an audience, it's bad for advertisers. And that's why it had to be out with the videos and in with the programming: it's all about the Benjamins. Thank you, I was raised on the streets.

I'm also conflicted about MTV's depiction of "the good life" in shows like Cribs and Pimp My Ride. Coming from the guy who likes The Hills, I know it sounds hypocritical.

Still, there's something about The Hills that, to me, feels like harmless entertainment and something about the other offerings that feels like a creepy celebration of celebrity, consumption, and narcissism.

And I'm the advertising instructor!

***

For now, I'm happy to get MTV Canada, the same way I'm happy to get HBO Canada: it's better than nothing.

However, I couldn't help but notice that, when I was in Chicago last week, the U.S. has something like five HBO and six MTV stations.

I wonder if that dude still fixes satellites?

Comedy CDs: let's go drink to the death of a clown!

Thank you. Good night!

It's a good thing that Rodney Dangerfield passed away before he really stopped getting respect.

Because if you think that the poor musician has it bad in this era of free downloads and bitTorrents, save some pity in your heart for the poor stand-up comic.

I love listening to stand-up comedy CDs when I go on long road trips, the perfect cure for the alternative: staring out the car window for nine hours and thinking, "Gee, this looks like a John Mellencamp video."

I see no rain, scarecrow, blood, or plough here.

But evidence points to this pastime being as hip as taking a horse and carriage to the talkies, slipping a mickey, or reading a news (get this!) paper.

True story

I recently found myself standing in line at Borders on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, where I bought up much of the store's catalogue of $5 comedy CDs - Don Rickles, Gilda Radner, Joe Rogan, Doug Stanhope, Bob Newhart, and Bill Cosby.

When I got to the counter, the young checkout clerk gave my purchases a glance and looked at me like a scientist looks at a cow's eyeball she's about to dissect.

"What are these?" she asked.

"Comedy CDs," I said.

"What do you do with them?"

"I listen to them on road trips."

"And they're just people telling jokes?"

"Just sell me the damn CDs!"

OK, I made up the last line to try to save face, but the message was pretty clear: the whole idea of buying a CD (gasp!), listening to comedy (gasp!), and listening to it again someday (gasp!) was a pretty foreign concept to this person.

Ta-daaa!

Mad Men, mad laffs

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The heyday of the stand-up comedy record was the 60s when Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby ruled.

On Mad Men last season, Paul puts on Bob Newhart's The Button-Down Mind album and says, "It's not Lenny Bruce, but it's good" as everyone stands around the record player listening and laughing.

Get this: in 1960, Newhart outsold Elvis Presley and the Sound of Music soundtrack and won a Grammy for "Album of the Year" by telling stories as one half of an overheard phone conversation.

Here, Newhart talks about what it would have sounded like if Abe Lincoln had a press agent (the audio starts at one minute - don't let this dude's questionable intro stop you!):



Listening to this today, I'm shocked by a number of things:

• The length of time it takes for Bob to set up the bit.

• The long length of the bit - seven minutes.

• That Bob starts by assuming the audience may have actually read a book, "The Persuaders."

• Bob's laid-back delivery.

• That the audience buys the esoteric premise - this is a press agent talking to Abe Lincoln - right off the top.

• The audience's hearty laughs at light and inoffensive material.

• The audience's outrageously long attention span.

• The light ending and audience's applause and recognition that the bit is over.

Fear of silence

Bob Newhart is one of my favorite comics, but I'm not sure that it would be possible for a comic to get away with this anymore. Any comic.

One second into the part about reading a book and..."Boooooring!"

Check out the very successful Dane Cook and his pathological fear of losing the audience for even a second:



Don't blame Dane Cook.

Today, you can't assume that the audience will go along with the bit, because the audience probably won't, and certainly not with something seven minutes long that presupposes their familiarity with the Persuaders.

However, it might get the crowd to light torches and brandish six guns as they chase you out of town.

"Can you believe that this guy thinks we read books, didn't tell one dirty joke, and expected us to listen for seven minutes. F*** him!"

I hosted at Rumors for years, and I remember seeing John Wing - a prickly comic at the best of times - mention MIT in a punchline to no laughs.

"What's that?" asked an audience member.

"Massachusetts...Institute...of Technology!" he yelled. He left the stage a few minutes later to a true smattering of applause.

So, who do I blame?

Let's blame the Internet!

The Internet has brought us a lot of great stuff, but longer attention spans isn't one of them.

As well, the Internet kicks ass at giving us the info we want, but it's not so good at giving us the info we need. In this fragmented world of news and information, does anyone have the same points of reference anymore?

To the stand-up comic, this means that it's become harder and harder to come up with original premises that hold the audience's attention. Uh-oh, time to get back to basics: airplanes, visits to the doctor, women going to the bathroom in groups, Transcona. Wah, wah, wah.

As a teacher, I can also vouch that it's officially hard to compete with email, text messages, and online pornography, at the audience's - er, students' - fingertips, mobile and on demand!

When a student stares back at me with a glassy stare and one hand is under the desk it can only mean one thing. Not that! It can only mean that there's some text messaging going on. When that happens, a little piece of me - and teaching and learning - dies.

The poor comedian has the same problem. No matter how great and entertaining you are, somewhere in the audience, someone is thinking, "I wonder how the kids are doing. I'll just check my text messages for a minute..."

If you're still paying attention, here's the point:

If we can no longer give someone our "central attention" when they're standing right there in front of us, staring us in the eye, what hope is there for the poor stand-up trying to get our attention on the outdated format called "CD?"

Have we still got drinking?