Idiot Logos

I'll never understand the purpose of television idiot logos. Those are the logos that are plastered across every cable television station. Aesthetically, they're a bother because they obscure some portion of the programming. It's also annoying to consider that they're on every channel because cable channels think that the average person is a complete moron and wouldn't have a clue to what channel they're watching without them. I always thought it was funny that one of the longest holdouts to adopting an idiot logo was Nickolodeon. For years, Nickolodeon held out against adding an idiot logo to their shows because kids knew what channel they were looking for and what channel they were watching. Now that Nick has an idiot logo, I can only conclude that what we've been hearing so long is finally true, that kids are getting dumber. It looks like they're finally as stupid as the adults who are confused by the quantity of channels available to them. It wasn't till the big three networks adopted idiot logos that I finally realized how much of their audience abandoned them for cable. When the major networks have to advertise who they are with an idiot logo, they're no longer major networks. They're just one more cable channel.

Why aren't idiot logos put on top of commercials? It'd be nice to think that the average cable station has some unique purpose to warrant their existence and that the shows they broadcast give some clue to their purpose. Nickolodeon is for kids, the History Channel has historical programs, MTV has music (oops, not anymore), and so on. The one time when an idiot logo would be worthwhile is when a commercial is on. That's the one place that cable channels will never put a logo. After all, commercials pay their bills. Better to plaster logos all over the shows being broadcast. Whenever I'm channel surfing, it seems as if half the channels I surf through are running commercials. How's a person supposed to know what channel they're watching if it's playing a commercial? If a cable company wants me to stop at their channel while I'm surfing, they better give me a reason to. There's very little reason to stop channel surfing when I come to a commercial.

VH1 will be forever infamous as being the first cable company to place their logo over their broadcasts. At the time, they were pleased as punch with themselves and saw every complaint as good news because it showed them how many people were watching. I can only guess that I was one of the few people who switched to other stations for music because VH1 never stopped using the idiot logo. Over the years, nearly every other cable company followed suit. AMC remains one of the few channels to not do so, presumably because they're product is unique enough that people have no trouble either finding AMC or seeking out the channel.

VH1 and MTV remain the most obnoxious users of idiot logos. It's bad enough that these companies think we're too stupid to know what we're watching. They think we're too stupid to know when they're playing something new because they have to additionally plaster a big logo all over a video when it's new. I don't know about everybody else, but I have a simple rule to figuring out when something is new. If I haven't seen it, it's new. A note for the pinhead executives at VH1 and MTV, the video no longer warrants having a "New" label applied to it six months after it appears. It's not new anymore. Of course, it will be for me because that's when I might tune into their channel again. That's not the end of it. If the video happens to be one that they feel is important (which probably means they've received their payola from the record studios because it's pretty clear that the decisions being made by these companies have little to do with the quality of their programming), they'll put another "breakthrough" label or something else all over the video. Again, I have a rule of thumb as to whether I'll like a video or not--I either like or I don't. A big label on the video telling me how good it is isn't going to make me like it. Generally, it prejudices me against it and I'll not buy the CD out of spite.

That's not the end of idiot logo mania for MTV and VH1. They also slap big ol' logos on their programming to let the audience know what's coming next, to push their websites and advertising future programming. Maybe this is the future of television, commercials taking up 90% of the screen while TV shows occupy the space currently taken up by idiot logos. With cable broadcasters constantly insulting their audiences and trying to see how much people will put up with, it's small wonder that people are finding other things to do with their time.