Rediscovering the Music Video

It’s been a long time since I saw a video on American MTV. I think the last time I saw one on TV at all was on MTV Europe while in France at the W3C Plenary (I saw some great ones on MTV India… wow… twisted, but in a different way than German techno videos… avert your eyes – they can scar your retinas). But, recently, I downloaded the Democracy Player and discovered Telemusicvision. It’s just music videos you can download and watch through the player… I know, crazy. There’s one in particular that I’ve been watching over and over. Bright Eyes’ The Bottom of Everything is a haunting song about a plane crash, and the video gives it this happy sureal edge that’s completely engrossing.\
The only problem I have with videos is that they taint songs forever. A song that I may have some deep emotional connection can be totally ruined by the video. It’s a risk, but hey, I get to watch music video again. Hooray, interweb! And the best part? They’re all independent artists.\
OK, one last thing before I toddle off the bed. I’ve been thinking about this since coming back from Edinburgh with my UK Big Brother addiction. Don’t you think that DirecTV or someone gave us the best TV from all over the world? I had high hopes for BBC America, but the only current thing they show is BBC News. I want the best of British, Australian, New Zealand, and if they can do subtitles quick enough, the best of everyone else’s TV too. DirecTV has room for way more channels, and they already provide scores of Spanish, French, Chinese and Indian channels as unadvertised add-ons, why not a premium package of the best of the rest of the English-speaking world? I can understand licensing issues with networks like Channel4 replaying US shows, but there are ways around that (and about time, I would think). Right now, the only way to get really good reality TV (well, if insanely entertaining crazy people is “really good” – I think it is) is to download it “illegally” with bittorrent. If someone gave me another way to do it that was legal and easier, I’d totally do it. I’d pay as much as I do for HBO to get a package of UK and Australian networks, even if they blacked out replays of US shows. Come on DirecTV, gimme what I want!