MTV changes logo, name to GTL

MTV will now just be called GTL. (That’s Gym, Tan, Laundry for those of you who DON’T know).

This AdAge article reports that MTV is “updating” it’s logo for the first time in 28 years.

“Music is still at the center of so much of what we do,” said MTV general manager Stephen Friedman, “But we’ve really expanded what that means. We needed the logo to be flexible enough to have the artists within it but also the stars of our shows. It’s an updating that speaks to this audience in a much simpler, bolder way.”

P.S., MTV, your programming has nothing to do with music anymore.

As MTV is in the business of producing E! Television’s leftovers (Jersey Shore was originally offered to E!), it’s prime-time programming has nothing to do with sharing music or music videos as a pop-culture-informed art form, and everything to do with promoting trashy, shamefully naive, unrealistic behavior to the entitled masses through the premises of its shows and the ridiculous people in them.

So call a spade, a spade, MTV. Admit you’re in the business of peddling smut with low production cost and you only run videos for an hour or two at 5 in the morning – a time slot that finds your target audience only just asleep after a long night of clubbing and smooshing.

Shameful admission? I’ve watched The Jersey Shore – a show MTV seems to believe will save its spiraling ratings. But ‘The Shore’ is a train wreck; that’s why I and a lot of people watch. And if I laughed, it was at the show – not with it.

But The Jersey Shore won’t float MTV forever, because the lifestyles the people on ‘The Shore’ live doesn’t, or shouldn’t, last forever. It gets a little creepy when a leathery-tan, super-ripped late-30-something is fighting the beats in the club. Just saying.

So, MTV doesn’t need a logo redesign if it really wants to save its ratings. It needs go back to its roots, if you will, and re-consider how it got to be internationally renowned in the first place.

Music, unlike fickle Jersey Shore fads, is timeless. It breaks down cultural and international boundaries. It affects people endlessly. And it’s a timelessly marketable product that would keep ratings afloat if delivered in a smart enough manner, arguably forever.

You’re 28 MTV. Time to grow up and produce some real Music Television.