As you’ve all heard, MTV’s ‘Total Request Live’ got canceled last week, and the six people who care all nagged MTV to grant a reprieve. So far – thankfully – the answer is no. And now it’s all over, TRL’s staff and a vast swathe of other MTV workers are getting a special bonus this Christmas – Their very own pink-slip. Their jobs will dissolve in early December.
It gets worse: MTV’s parent, Viacom, also owns Comedy Central, CMT and Nickelodeon, and jobs at those stations are also at risk. Thousands of people with mortgages and families will be forcibly evicted from jobs they all loved, into what is arguably the worst job market in the last fifty years. Right before the Holidays.
This is sick. American TV is paid for by ads. These ads are watched by the viewers. If you don’t get the viewers, you can’t pay the bills; You pull in the viewers by having good shows, and choosing the shows is the province of management, not the hard-working drones they’re about to discard.
Viacom let a small, insular clique of gray-haired Execs schedule shows for people a fraction their age, then acted surprised when the ratings were bad and now plan to fire half the workers – right before Christmas! – as if the whole sick debacle was entirely their fault.
Some people couldn’t find their own butt with both hands. Apparently, Viacom call them Management gold.
