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The Wasting Time blog has an excellent post about MTV and its transformation from an influential music channel to a purveyor of brain-dead unoriginal reality TV programming. They even go so far as to suggest that Music Television is no longer an appropriate title for the channel, considering “less than 10% of its programming is devoted to music”.

I remember back when MTV was young. We couldn’t afford satellite TV in our house, but my friend Stoogie had it in his place and we’d trail over to his house once or twice a week to watch shows like Headbangers’ Ball and Beavis And Butthead.

MTV used to be where you got your fix of new music.

Did the rise of alternative niche music channels change that? Was it the dreaded Internet? Who knows?

Now that I’m older, and I can afford a subscription to the full music package, I’ve chosen not to. MTV used to be the essential part of any cable or satellite music package. It simply has nothing to offer now, yet they’re still charging for brain-numbing programming instead of the leading edge music they were once famous for.

What a shame.

Two questions though: are there any good alternatives to MTV worth looking at? And if not, where do you find out about new music these days?

Yep, Scouserville is MTV’s preferred venue for 2008’s Europe Music Awards. Specifically, the brand new 10,000 seater Echo Arena.

Great news for Liverpool which is also the European City of Culture in 2008, both events tie in nicely together and should attract attention to the City.

Of course, the organisers couldn’t possibly resist the soundbyte opportunity to name check The Beatles along with various Liverpudlian musical acts of varying quality. Bizarrely, they tried to shoehorn Atomic Kitten into their list of great musical achievements.

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