Earlier this week, Cox Cable announced that they had “formed a partnership with Viacom’s MTV2 music network, which will promote both MTV2 and Cox’s high-speed Internet service.” I’ll buy that, but the way they have chosen to “promote MTV2” is questionable and unique.
They turned it off.
At least, they did mine. While flipping through cable channels this morning I found a bright purple screen on channel 55 where MTV2 used to be. I am no advertising genius, but taking away a channel from your paying customers seems to be an odd way to promote it.
The channel’s not gone, of course. It’s just been removed for us dinosaurs who still subscribe to Cox’s analog cable service. MTV2 itself isn’t a deal breaker for me. MTV hasn’t been the voice of my generation for over a decade now, and I don’t know that MTV2 ever was. Despite the messenger, the message itself is clear. Obviously, channels are going to slowly be migrated from analog to digital cable until we are forced to switch. I hate being pushed toward a service that offers hundreds of channels when there are less than five we watch on a regular basis.
I know what you mean. I spend more time on the channel guide looking for something worth watching than I do actually watching a program. By the time I find a show, it’s already 5-10 minutes into it, and then I don’t want to watch it. Solution: turn the darn thing off and get a good book, which I am doing more and more of. So they are doing us a good deed after all!