Subterranean, on MTV2
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There used to be a show called 120 Minutes, which for years would air late at night on MTV and later MTV2, and had a number of different hosts over the years. The host would interview musical artists, and of course also played lots of cool music videos that you probably wouldn't normally see anywhere else, for the most part. Toward the end of the series' run, I believe it was hosted by Jim Shearer, and then... the show ended. And a new show started called Subterranean, which was hosted by... Jim Shearer.

It was pretty much the same as 120 Minutes (except it was only 60 minutes). So basically I saw no point in changing it, I was rather against that move. I don't have any idea why it was changed. Maybe they didn't want to devote 2 hours a week to it anymore (though toward the end, it wasn't even on every week, it was pretty unpredictable whether it'd be on or not, I think). Of course, I never watched it all the time, anyway. And since it was on late, I'd be more likely to record it and watch it later than to watch while it was on. That's still the case, actually. Though of course I'd eventually record Subterranean on DVR instead of VCR... But anyway, other than cutting the length in half, the only possible reason I could see to change it would be for it to be more of a Shearer-centric show, but I'm probably wrong about that.

Though it'd be ironic if that was the case, because he doesn't host it anymore. In fact it doesn't seem like anyone hosts it these days. There are segments between videos, with musical artists talking about stuff, but it doesn't even seem like interviews, I'm not aware of anyone asking them questions, or anything. Not that it matters to me, it's mostly artists I'm not interested in listening to, so I tend to fast forward through that stuff (though I do feel bad about that, and sometimes I do listen to some of it). In fact, I often don't watch a whole video, just give it a minute or two to see if it catches my interest, then fast forward through to the next video. And as cool as I still think it is to see videos that don't get played elsewhere, I just don't have time these days to try to get into indie stuff or whatever. So there are relatively few videos I actually copy onto DVD-Rs, or whatever. Though even some that I don't copy, I'm glad to have seen. Of course, I also sometimes like to look for videos online after seeing them on the show, and may share links on facebook. Plus it's cool that a lot of the time I'll hear these songs get popular like months after I first heard them on Subterranean, so that makes me feel like I'm cool. Which is a neat trick, because I'm not. Oh! I also meant to say that I think for awhile, when the show first started, they would also occasionally (maybe once a month? Or every other week? I forget) do a show called "Subterranean UK," which I can't recall for certain if it was on instead of the regular Subterranean, or as I think more likely, came on after that week's Subterranean. Anyway, it was... basically the same thing as the American version, but from the UK. Or maybe it just played mainly videos from the UK. Or something.


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