"I no longer want my MTV."  Image provided by Photobucket

As a kid, I thought I would never outgrow the revolutionary juggernaut known as MTV.  I remember staying up way past my bedtime on a Friday night, deep into 11-year-old sleepover giggles with my girlfriend Adrienne, when she requested we turn on MTV. She’d heard from her big-haired, acne-scarred older brother that “Headbanger’s Ball” was the coolest show on TV. Her brother was a huge 80’s metal fan. He’d give us rides to the mall in his light yellow S10 pick-up, with the cassette tape deck turned way past acceptable decibels, blasting the screams of rock bands like “Iron Maiden” and “Slayer.” Once delivered to the mall, Adrienne and I would scramble out of his truck like scared mice, our hands held over our ears, embarrassed at the thought of someone we knew seeing us jump from the metal-maniac's truck.

It was on that fateful late-night sleepover in 1987 that my devotion to the channel know as MTV was born.  Out of curiosity, Adrienne and I tuned in to “The Ball” and watched the debut of a video from a Los Angeles-based band with the song “Welcome to the Jungle.”  The band was Guns N’ Roses and that video left an indelible impression in my adolescent mind.  Young Axl Rose gets off a bus that recently rolled into L.A. and before we know it the singer is writhing and vibrating while strapped into an electric chair screeching “Sha-na-na-na-na-na-knees, knees!  Oh, I want to watch you bleed!”

Adrienne and I, our eyes big as saucers, watched as Axl taught us all about the dangers of the seedy streets of L.A. and how our innocence would be lost in the “jungle.”  I was hooked.  This was different, dangerous, exciting, and my parents would most definitely hate it.  Gone were the days of watching cartoons like “He-Man” and “Gem” with my younger brother and sister; I wanted my MTV.

Don’t get the wrong idea.  I didn’t become an MTV addict.  At least not like the neighbor boys whose mom had to block the channel from their cable lineup.  This extreme and frightening measure was taken when her 3 sons started refusing to leave the house to play outside in the summer sun.  Instead of taking a dip in the backyard pool and reveling in the 101-degree Phoenix weather, they wanted to hibernate in the 65-degree air-conditioning, under blankets, with blood-shot eyes, to watch their 10th hour in a row of MTV.  Ten hours that included a loop of the same videos over-and-over.  They just couldn’t resist Motley Crue’s stripper-themed “Girls, Girls, Girls” video for the 100th time.

But I did love my MTV.  In high school, my family moved back to the capital of Iowa and I was gobsmacked when our local cable provider threatened to remove MTV from their lineup to make room for some incarnation of ESPN.  Teens from around Des Moines gathered in front of the cable provider’s office, protesting with big homemade signs that carried phrases playing on the channel’s “I Want My MTV” slogan.  This whole protest left me confused.  I was proud of my fellow teens for banning together to save something the adults just didn’t understand.  But it was also sort of pathetic.  I’d never seen such solidarity, such support for a single cause.  But it was for...MTV.  The efforts of those rebellious teens paid off and thankfully our MTV was preserved in Des Moines.  

Now that I’m older, wiser and a parent myself, I can understand why MTV was seen as disposable by the powers that be.  I’ve actually started to see the channel as (Gasp!) a bad influence.  The channel doesn’t play daring or inappropriate videos much anymore; they’ve switched to almost exclusive reality TV programming, that in my estimation, is far beyond daring or inappropriate.

MTV reality shows like “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” have flipped my switch from “turn on” to “turn off” with the channel.  I want to ask the executives at MTV why they find it necessary to glorify teen pregnancy and motherhood to our young and impressionable adolescents who hold the channel in high esteem.   MTV knows it’s power, it’s influence, yet it doesn’t seem to take that responsibility seriously.  In fact, one could argue that the reverence of teen pregnancy through their successful reality programming is an affront to their many dedicated fans.  One could argue that MTV is actually doing a disservice to it’s teen worshippers.

But the question is, has this always been true?  Is “Teen Mom” the 2010 version of my 1987 “Welcome to the Jungle?”  Taboo, scary, edgy and whatever other unsettling adjectives you can think of?  I don’t think so.  I think MTV is taking it too far and needs to take their power over our youth seriously.  

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I no longer want my MTV.