MTV's VMAs Keep Deteriorating

Back in the day MTV was all about the music videos. It was a bigtime novelty and over the years that novelty has gradually eroded into a channel which features shows about dating, rich kids who party, celebrity homes and other short attention span programming. The Video Music Awards are a "time-honored" annual tradition on MTV, as they pay tribute to the most innovative and creative music videos in various music genres. The show used to have a big name host such as Dennis Miller, or Chris Rock, or the Wayans Brothers. It also used to have structure with musical performances and various comedy bits. It seems that just like the MTV channel itself, the awards show has now given way to an ADD-style program with no rhyme or reason. The 2007 event was yet another example. This year's VMA's seemed all over the place, with no real organization. Performances were being held all over Las Vegas, which is fine, but many performances were shown briefly and then cut off. Award winners were either shown stuck in the middle of a mass of people in the crowd, or they had to try to make their way through a maze of tables to go get their moonman. The categories themselves often made no sense as well; a "Quadruple threat" category was added to honor musicians who had clothing/fashion lines and other business ventures going on. Not sure in the slightest how that relates to the music video. The VMA's continue to deteriorate as evidenced by the above, by the opening performance by Britney Spears, other scattered performances/presenters and by the fact that various celebs were just allowed to rant on the microphone. One highlight had to be Justin Timberlake when he did accept his award in a crowd as he said something to the effect of "lets encourage MTV to play more videos". Amen to that. In another interesting closing note, Kanye West said he will never return to MTV after the VMA's. Read the story here.