MTV and to a lesser extent its sibling MuchMusic are now broadcasting almost on a twenty-four-hour basis around the world (169 countries at last count) programming that is built around one central theme, what I call the celebration of the lifestyle of the raunchy, rich and irresponsible. It’s a business model that has allowed MTV and its properties to grow into a seven billion dollars a year operation (BusinessWeek Online, Can MTV Stay Cool? February 20, 2006).

While this business model might be good for Viacom, the owners of MTV (MTV, again according to BusinessWeek, accounts for 85% of all the operating profits of media giant Viacom Inc) is it good for society to subject its youth to a barrage of programming promoting an hedonistic lifestyle as a vehicle to sell the trinkets and baubles of that lifestyle, everything from how-to sex books, to clothing that is designed to reveal not to cover, to jewellery, to hardcore pornography, to whatever.

MTV programming is further blurring the line between morality and immorality, in fact, from its programming point of view there is no such thing as immoral behaviour. Perhaps, but this should not be up to advertisers to decide since the implication for society is so far reaching.

Broadcasters like MTV have largely replaced peer pressure in influencing teenagers to behave in a way their parents would consider immoral or vulgar.

MTV is now broadcasting, almost 24 hours a day, what, only a few years ago, we would have dismissed as pornography or programming in abysmally bad taste. It’s not pornography, MTV would ague, it’s reality.

Sex is what the kids are having, sex is what they want to talk about, and programs about sex are what they want to see. To watch and listen to MTV, you would think they are performing a public service by letting kids know who is doing what to whom and what they have to say about the experience.

MTV is a leader in selling adult content to tweens, children between the age of 8 and 14. According to the producers of Buying Into Sex (2005), a CBC documentary about how marketers are selling a grown-up, sexy image to pre-teen girls, “Tweens are being bombarded with sexy images by the makers of clothes, toys, video games, music videos -- all aimed at getting this freshly- coveted demographic to buy, buy and buy some more.”

In 2006 MTV Networks Co., according to Business Week Online (Can MTV Stay Cool? February 20, 2006), was a seven billion dollars a year business. With so much money to be made in marketing a sex-oriented lifestyle to a receptive vulnerable audience it was to be expected that the rest of the entertainment industry would be quick to follow suit.

It is easy to forget that the warning about adult content ahead was once meant for adults, who, after the kids were in bed, were given a choice as to the type of late evening programming they wanted to watch. Today, that admonition is not so much a warning to adults but an invitation to children to watch.

The now ubiquitous warning about mature themes, nudity, graphic sexual content, obscene language and violence is more and more evident when kids are watching television and their parents are not e.g. after school and, for some reason, Sunday afternoons.

MTV and copy-cat mainstream networks have made voyeurism and eavesdropping into a virtue and mimicking the juvenile sexual behaviour of the people you are watching a sign of maturity.

Young, single people of both sexes living together under the same roof is not new. My generation, or maybe the generation before, pioneered the concept of the modern urban commune.

I lived in such a commune, an urban commune, for almost two years in what was then known as Pestalozzi College at the corner of Chapel and Rideau (read A Woman Who Loved Women and the Intimacy of Igloos) and yes, there was sex, lots of sex.

You had sex when you thought you had finally solved the world’s problems, which you solved over and over again; you had sex when you had worked hard and needed a break or a reward; you had sex because it is one of the greatest cure for loneliness ever invented; you had sex because you were in love.

What is new is the artificial environment where privacy is taboo with cameras everywhere recording, 24 hours a day seven days a week the interaction of a cast of young exhibitionists deliberately chosen for their volatile tempers, in-your-face attitude, sex appeal and a vocabulary rich in vulgar and obscene expressions.

The most provocative and shameless get interviewed in what passes on MTV for current affairs programming and become instant celebrities and role models for millions of MTV's young viewers.  It's Machiavellian manipulation of both the participants in these so-called reality shows and an impressionable audience by MTV for purely monetary gains.

Sex at Pestalozzi was part of a normal existence — it was not the reason for your existence. There was more to life then sex and the pursuit of sex.

For MTV and its imitators sex is all there is. Reality is sex, and having sex is being the best you can be. To borrow a quote from George Paton who was referring to war not sex: "Compared to [sex], all other forms of human endeavour shrink to insignificance."

MTV, stripped of all pretence, is just another peddler; a peddler with a license to sell sex as a form of amusement and promiscuity as a lifestyle, and young women as no more than hoes (whores) and sluts or simply "skanks" to attract advertisers.

To sell sex and a promiscuous self-indulgent lifestyle to adults who have learned to discriminate between what is vulgar and immoral is one thing; to make that same sales’ pitch to children and teenagers quite another.

MTV would argue that what they are broadcasting is simply a reflection of the new morality, their contrived reality an accurate reflection of the mindset of today’s youth. If we allow broadcasters, whose main pre-occupation is shareholder's wealth, to decide what is moral and what is not, we are as morally guilty for the kids' apparent descent into decadence as MTV.

Bernard Payeur, April 20, 2007