I’ve praised the advent of the Digital Video Recorder for saving me so much time and allowing me to never have to see a commercial.  The DVR will earn its keep yet again tonight when I record what used to be a watch-every-minute-of-it TV event – the MTV Video Music Awards.  I’m sure part of this stems from the fact that I am not part of the MTV demographic anymore but there really isn’t a channel for someone who is of VH1 age but prefers Headbanger’s Ball or the old 120 Minutes alternative show.  The MTV Music Awards Show used to be the one show I looked forward to for its spontaneity and memorable performances and that has been sorely lacking the past few years.

I still lament the lack of rock music in most modern radio nowadays and on most music TV channels.  This has also been reflected in the music awards shows which now are simply a mixture of bland pseudo-R&B singerdancermodels, wannabe gangster rappers, and American Idol rejects.  About the only “rock” on these shows are the pussified emo “punk” bands who are about as edgy as a KFC spork.  Their only redeeming grace is their music at least resembles rock music and they actually play their instruments.

Thankfully I’ll be able to watch a 6 hour show (including pre-show) in about 30 minutes, stopping for actual rock performances like the Raconteurs while zipping through the usual tepid lip-synchers who wouldn’t know what a live performance was if it smacked them in the face.  I really don’t think my dislike of most performers on MTV is a generational thing.  It’s a dislike for the current trend to push rock to the side to promote music that will fade quicker than an already-peeled banana.

On a semi-related note, I’m not thrilled with Comcast replacing a high-definition channel (INHD2) with one that I hope isn’t like its parent station – MTV-HD.  It appears it won’t be simply episodes of the Real World or that awful 16^th birthday show for spoiled rich kids.  Supposedly it will consist of live performances and other music-related programming unlike the actual MTV channel.  INHD2 was a great channel though and I think a lot of people will not be happy that they are taking one channel away and replacing it with another unrelated channel.  In addition, I noticed on the website that this MTV channel also includes Country Music Channel footage which I will not allow to taint my high-def TV.