Thoughtnami™

This may get a little wordy, so bear with me for a while.  A little over a year ago this month, we officially entered the Glitch. This isn't a corner of The Twilight Zone , a sector in The Outer Limits , or a reflection within the Black Mirror , but rather some odd series of events that showed the world that the United States of America is not only imperfect but critically flawed, unapologetically hateful, unbalanced, and tenuously fragile.  The United States showed the world that it doesn't matter if you're educated, empathetic, rational, and truly overqualified, ESPECIALLY if you're a person of color or a woman. Or, heaven forbid, a Black woman (a sidenote: Michelle Obama was right, and the fact that so many people are trying to distort what she said just proves her comments were true and valid). The United States showed the world that its citizens are pretty okay with authoritarian fascism under the rule of a revenge-seeking felonious despot surrounded by racist, sex...

 I have seen a madman completely destroy a major American institution to build a bloated, gaudy monument to themselves thanks to billionaire friends largely flipping the bill.  But this article is not about what the current Administration has literally done to the White House.  This is about how David Ellison destroyed Paramount to create a media empire that conservatives have only dreamed about thanks to his billionaire daddy largely flipping the bill, radically changing CBS News into a conservative-leaning propaganda group and canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  Even after that, he wants to buy a second, much larger media company, Warner Bros Discovery, to solidify himself as the Big Media Thanos that rules Hollywood and the complete backing of the Administration. Let me be abundantly clear.  I don’t want ANYBODY to buy Warner Bros Discovery. At all.  I don’t want Comcast to buy them. I don’t want to see a tech company like Netflix, Amazon, or ...

In mid-September 2025, I had convinced myself to write out a plan that had been in my brain for a while that I never had the nerve to get out of my head.  I created an entire plan to reinvent, reimagine, and reestablish the MTV brand for the future.   To repeat what I said throughout the entirety of this project, I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. And this was a fun project to create. While a lot of what I wrote can be lost in the ether, here are the chapters of #projectmtv: PROLOGUE: I Want My MTV Explaining the Science Reintroducing MTV: Music Television Presenting MTV Generation Presenting MTV Palladia Presenting Club MTV The FAST Lane The Rebirth of Liquid Television License to Survive Questions and Final Thoughts Reinventing MTV: A Visual Portfolio I even managed t...

  Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   1) “Will MTV air music videos 24 hours a day?” Absolutely not. None of the four MTV linear networks will be wall-to-wall music videos. Price concerns aside, the need to air all videos is completely unnecessary in the age of YouTube, which has unedited music at your fingertips at every given hour of the day. The main MTV network will be 50% music programming, which is, honestly 100% more music than the network currently airs today. In addition to the morning and mid-afternoon blocks, MTV will also air MTV Top 20 Video Countdown every Friday night with next day streaming on Paramount+ and a Sunday primetime rebroadcast on Club MTV. There will be music airing in a bulk of the hours of the secondary channels. ...

Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Paramount Skydance’s music television library is already one of the most impressive in the industry. Paramount owns to collective archives of MTV, VH1, CMT, and BET, including every music series, every interview segment, and every live musical performance that has ever aired on those channels.   Shows like 120 Minutes, Week in Rock, Headbangers Ball, Video Soul, Rap City, Yo! MTV Raps, Behind the Music, MTV Unplugged, VH1 Storytellers, CMT Crossroads, BET Soulstage, 106 & Park, and Total Request Live should all be fixtures across the new MTV.  Yes, I do believe that BET’s music programming has as much a place at MTV as VH1 or CMT. The whole “separate-but-equal” mentality within Paramount is ridiculo...

  Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Prologue: Animation has played a vital role in MTV’s brand since day one. It was part of its visual identity from the very beginning, and indents created by young independent animators from around the world helped create the visual pop imagery the brand was known for. In the 1990s, MTV embraced original animated series starting with Liquid Television , a popular weekly anthology of shorts that introduced the world to Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux , two shows that would eventually expand into their own series. Other anthologies followed like Cartoon Sushi (which introduced Celebrity Deathmatch and The Brothers Grunt ) and Oddities (which was more action in-tone with The Head and The Maxx) .  Daria , a...

Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Prologue: While the MTV rebrand is largely concentrated on the linear channels, that is only the cusp of what it’s about. By redefining what the MTV brand is all about, fully expanding into free ad-based streaming television (FAST) is where the MTV brand will thrive and survive into the 21st century.  MTV should go head-on and rocket into the future. Welcome to the MTV FAST Lane . The MTV FAST Lane channels will represent each of the four brands. MTV will present channels that highlight the latest music from all genres. MTV Generation will be bring you back to the early days of the network with branded channels targeted for music fans of all generations. Club MTV will embrace millennial and Gen Z tastes in enterta...

  Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Prologue: If MTV is the mothership, MTV Generation is the retro brand and a hub for music history, and MTV Palladia is the world stage and THE home of music, where would a brand like MTV 2 fit in this new MTV rebrand? Simple. It wouldn’t. MTV2 has been a confusing mess for decades now. After being the lone MTV spinoff without the traditional logo, it always felt out of place. The two-headed dog used to represent rock and hip-hop, and MTV 2 was supposed to be the home to both. Unfortunately, as the years passed, the direction of the channel deviated. Today, it’s a mess. More of the same old repeats that are on currently on MTV, even some airing in the same timeslots. If MTV is considered a mess by most viewe...

Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Prologue: MTV Live is not a channel that airs live programming. There are no VJs presenting videos on-air. There are no live concerts or performances.  The name doesn’t make sense. The channel itself is a treasure trove of musical performances from the past as well as showcases of newer acts on stage.  Shakespeare once wrote “All the world’s a stage,” so MTV should reinvent MTV Live as a proper showcase for musical performances out of the video box and resurrect a familiar brand they honed yet threw away for no reason at all. It was a bold brand that showcased music from all kinds of bands and performers. We could resurrect that brand right now. This is the home of music.  This is MTV Palladia. MTV Palla...

Writer's Note: I am not, nor will I ever expect to be associated with and employed by MTV and its parent company, Paramount Skydance. This is part of #projectmtv, a fan-made MTV rebranding project. This is not happening in any form, but it's fun to dream. - jh   Prologue: Historians recognized the MTV brand as a unifying one for the demographics commonly known as Generation X and Millennials. At its peak, these two generations were the primary audiences for the network and watched the network evolve from an almost underground climate to a pop cultural juggernaut. Wall Street and Hollywood saw these groups as the future of pop media and made MTV the iconic brand it once was.  These generations witnessed about 25 years of music cultural evolution where they were exposed to. The birth of hip-hop and metal. The impact of rap and grunge. Music icons whose works still resonate with us today. The audience pretty much ruled the culture. They called this group the MTV Generation, ...