VH None

Since getting satellite radio about a year ago, I now spend very little time watching television anymore. But I have a routine in the morning that as soon as I am awake enough to put on my glasses, I flip on the TV: first to the Weather Channel, so I know what to expect when I head out for the day, and then I flip over to VH1 until I can get myself out of bed.

I don't know why I do this anymore, since I find VH1 completely unwatchable.

When I moved in with Diane back in 1996, I had cable television for the first time in my life (actually, I had it in college as well, but it was very limited). For most of the first month that I lived there, I spent as much time as I could watching television. And I noticed that VH1 seemed to be like MTV used to be back in its heyday; it actually played music videos.

Now it is twelve years later, and VH1 has followed the same trajectory as MTV: they only play videos in the morning, and then spend the rest of the time playing endless repeats of pop culture shows, countdown shows, and unscripted shows featuring Z-List "celebrities." Mostly, I watch the videos in the morning, so I am going to talk first about those.

Let's start with their parade of musicians they refer to as "You Oughta Know" artists. First, I hope they are paying Alanis Morissette royalties for ripping off her song. But they refer to these acts as "artists on the rise." If I were an artist, I would beg VH1 not to make me a "You Oughta Know" artist, because these people have one of two things happen: either they have one mammoth hit and then fade into immediate obscurity (like Daniel Powter, James Blunt, Corrine Bailey Rae), or they disappear as soon as VH1 discovers that no one is buying their records (Leela James, A Fine Frenzy, Feist, Chrisette Michele, and Regina Spektor come to mind). The jury is still out on Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat, and I am rooting for Miss Colbie, since her album is really, really good.

My other beef with VH1's music in the morning (the show is entitled "Jump Start") is that they start getting extremely repetitive. For a time, I couldn't turn on VH1 without seeing "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood or "Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5, and then later in the same morning, they played the same songs again. I discovered this at one point last year while waiting for the dryer repairman.

Then there are the pop culture shows. "Entertainment Weekly" said it best: is there a decade that VH1 doesn't love? We have been treated to three series about the 1980's two each of the '70s and '90's, "I Love Toys" and "I Love the Holidays". I guess that if it weren't for these shows, Hal Sparks and Michael Ian Black would be out on the streets and dangerous. What makes these worse is how much they hype them, but you know full well that if you wait about a month, you will get a chance to see them again. And again. And again.

The "Celebreality" shows are also irritating. What they seem to do is take the concepts of other reality shows and give the new "twist" by putting people at the absolute lowest rung of celebrity in place of normal people. "Celebrity Fit Club" is basically "The Biggest Loser" with celebrities, "The Surreal Life" is "The Real World," And "Flavor of Love," "Rock of Love," and "I Love New York" are all variations of "The Bachelor." Really original, no?

And finally, we have the countdown shows. Whenever I start watching these, it doesn't matter what they are counting down; I absolutely MUST keep watching until it's over. So I try to change channels as soon as possible as soon as I sense a countdown show.

Perhaps I should just watch "Squawk Box" on CNBC in the morning. I wonder if that would be better. It would probably depress me even more, considering the economy is going down the toilet. But that is a subject for another night's entry.