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Still, MTV didn't want to just martyr itself and show videos all day. What it did instead was learn how to make videos feel like programs, to hold viewers even when a bad song comes on. On 12 Angry Viewers, young people are asked to review videos on the merits of their visual style, although, despite repeated instructions, they can't seem to keep from talking about the music instead. On MTV Probe, kids are taped, cinema verite-style, expounding about what videos mean to their lives. In one 35-second segment, a guy explains to his friend, "You can do anything to music. You can have sex. Drive a car. It's like when I fail a test at school: I come home, I play my music, I get in a really good mood." This may be what the V chip is for.
Many of these ideas came from M2, MTV 's all-video station, and MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent of MTV. MuchMusic's window-lined Toronto studio inspired MTV's new Times Square set, which with its pool-playing and dart-throwing staff members shuffling around in the background, looks like your parents' basement if you didn't have parents. And, like the new MTV, the station broadcasts live and focuses on music. Not everything the Canadian service does has been imported, however. MuchMusic features a wide-screen video booth, where young Canadians seem to have a penchant for exposing themselves.
Still, adventurous programming is being encouraged. Along with some live-music shows and band biographies, the channel is considering a drama about long-distance relationships called Distance; a variety show with Beck as host; a parody of Kung Fu movies called Kung Pow; a pilot by John Woo; and Band of Spies, a comedy about CIA agents who go deep cover in a rock band. Hey, it could work, in a weird James-Bond-meets-anthrax, teenage-boy kind of way. Though more videos might be a safer way to shut Bart up for a while.