I just saw there is a retrospective of MTV airing on VH1. The news announcers, I guess trying to show how hip they are, said the first video aired on MTV was from The Bugles, not The Buggles, yet no one bothered to correct them on an obvious mistake. MTV is known more for Teen Mom and Jersey Shore than for groundbreaking music videos. In fact, an artist is more likely to debut a new video, if they make a music video for a song, on YouTube rather than MTV.

I don't know, maybe I expected music videos, especially a music video channel, to last a long time. Maybe I'm clinging on to my past too hard. It seems sad that 30 years later, yes it has been that long, MTV isn't showing music videos, isn't an interesting part of our lives, in fact is now so much of a footnote that anchors don't even bother to get the facts right on the station. Actually, when you look at it, MTV is allowing a sister station, which itself has gone more reality TV than music videos, to air a retrospective.

MTV represents an innocent time in our country, not so innocent as the 60s, 50s or 40s, but a time when some of still believed we could fight the power, when we could feed the world, when a concert could unite the planet. We still had hope that with the hope of song and with hard work we could fight injustice. It was also a time of silly fashions, of stupid songs, just like we have today, but there were also songs, along with visuals, which gave us hope or turned our eyes to troubles in the world.

In the 90s, things changed. I think the power of MTV became its Achilles heel. Innovative videos gave way to safe corporate fare. Boy bands became the rage. The Real World, which started off as a great human experiment in reality television, mutated into a celebrity making vehicle. By the time 9/11 hit, the network of music videos was pretty much over.

When I look at music videos on YouTube, the new ones, I don't see much intriguing social commentary. I know I will get people who might argue the girl power of Beyonce or the I-wanna-be-liked antics of Lady Gaga would qualify as socially conscious, but a lot of the videos out now to me symbolize parodies of videos. Looking at a Lady Gaga video you see images culled from a number of Madonna videos. With rap videos there are very few that might take a look like NWA, KRS-One, Public Enemy or even Run DMC. Again, this is if the artist is even allowed to make a video.

So it was sad realizing 30 years later music videos and MTV, which at the time seemed would be a revolution in style and substance, has become a footnote in history.