I Want My MTV-- back!

I had fun this week making co workers feel old with the celebration of MTV's 25th year on the air.  Click here to watch this week's What's Bugging You package. (The news story changes after 5:00pm on August 8th - so hurry! This link updates every Tuesday.)

When the music station launched August 1, 1981, neither Prince WIlliam nor Brittany Spears was born yet.  Madonna was only 23 that year. That's one year younger than Brittany is now.  At 25, MTV is even olden than its current target audience of 12 to 24.  So, say the average viewer is 18. He or she was eleven on the first day of Y2K and only four years old when former President Bill Clinton was inaugurated.  See how old you are compared to them by clicking here.

So it's no wonder why MTV didn't make a huge deal of its birthday milestone. Does its target audience care? Does an 18-year-old want to sit around and watch something his parents watched? MTV did put up an MTV 25 bug on the screen, and in between its regulary scheduled reality shows hosted a countdown featuring a video from each year. You can watch them online. Actually VH1 Classic aired MTV's first 24 hours of programming all day Tuesday.

The people I spoke with who remember watching MTV in its beginning years say they're frustrated because every time they turn on MTV they find reality shows instead of videos. MTV launched MTV 2, which you would think would be the place to turn to for videos, but that wasn't the case when I tried it Tuesday. Some high school reality show was on. Luckily for music lovers, there are other music channel choices. ( Hey- growing up I didn't have cable and had to rely on  Friday Night Videos to stay in the know.)

Here is something that 18-year-old might have trouble believing. We didn't have email when MTV went on the air. Not for what, another ten years?

Some Fun OUT of the Sun

Since starting my blog here on News12.com, I've become interested in what bloggers around the world are doing. It's interesting. Not only have I read some great poems, but I'm learning more than I ever thought possible about on line technology. I've also come across some fun quizzes to help you get to know yourself better.

First, a personality quiz I found on the blog of a new media firm maps out your qualities in color! Below are my results. Scroll over each color and the graph will reveal what they mean. Click on Dynamic Director to take the high-tech test yourself.

Dynamic Director

Thanks to the blog of Design Sojourn for helping me figure out which city I'd live in if I lived in Europe. (Though the first time I took the test it said Amsterdam.)

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris. You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

What European City Do You Belong In?

And if you'd like to see what your work or personal website looks like as a graph, this link will do it for you. I tried it out with this blog website. It looked cool and said I could put it up on my blog, but in order to do so I needed to make a screenshot of the graph, put it on flickr and tag it websitesasgraphs. Okay. If anyone figures out how to do this, please let me know! Also- if you send me your graph I'll post it here. Oh, and here is the blog in which I found out about the graph.

Living a Fantasy

As baseball bestows praise on its greatest this weekend during the annual Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, sports fans are getting ready for some football!

While Bruce Sutter, the first pitcher elected into the Hall of fame who never started a game, is inducted Sunday, it's already day three of NFL Training Camp.

What this means is that if you are still in baseball mode but are planning to join a Fantasy Football League this season, you better start strategizing. Fantasty Football fanatics intent on winning the office pool are already stressing over which running back and quarterback to pick if they don't get the ones they want.

If you do decide to join a league this season, you must realize how time consuming the fantasy is. The basis of the game is that you have to pick a team of players from all the teams. You get points depening on how each player does. In order to score for your team, you could potentially end up cheering against the team you've loved  since you were three. Of course during the season, you can make trades, but realize you will have to keep up with every player on every team for every game. This means you won't have time to actually sit and watch any of the games nor go to one. You'll be too busy running back and forth to your computer or clicking through the channels to see how your players and your teammates players are doing.

Fantasy Baseball also exists. But imagine keeping track of every player on every team for every game in baseball! For example, the football Giants play around 17 regular season games per season. Compare that to the baseball Yankees' 163! There are more baseball games in a month than during football's entire season.

For those of you who would like to see the baseball season wrapped up before the Football rage kicks in, here are a few highlights from the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Weekend 2006.

Along with Bruce Sutter, 17 electees from the pre-Negro league and Negro league were also inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Gene Elston, a radio announcer for the Houston Astros, was named the 2006 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award.

Tracy Ringolsby was elected the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. This award is for sports writing.

There was also a special screening of a movie coming out in September. It's called Everyone's Hero. Christopher Reeve was the original director on this animated film about a kid who believes he can make a difference if he just hangs in there despite overwhelming odds. This is said to have been Reeve's dream project.