Okay, I'm probably going to light a fire with this but I have to say it.
MTV is doing what is has been doing since it started up all those years ago: Mocking popular culture. It takes that which is popular and runs it through a meat grinder, lampooning it so perfectly that we apparently can't tell that what we're watching is a parody anymore.
Think about it. Go back to the good old days of MTV and think about how it mercilessly attacked popular culture with its programming. When I think of MTV, my mind goes animated and Aeon Flux, Ren & Stimpy, and Beavis & Butthead come up. Satire of dystopia, satire of cartoons, satire of MTV. Yes folks, MTV didn't even take itself seriously.
MTV evolved as television has changed. The Real World (a show so fake, they had to give the title an antonym) came along to mock the reality show and with it came Flavor of Love (how do you mock reality-based dating? With Flavor Flav, of course), Jackass (because Candid Camera and its many incarnations needed to be shown where they'd wind up), and the program everyone loves to hate, Jersey Shore.
Look closely, everybody. You're being mocked. You're being shown parodies and exaggerations of people that are so incredibly bad that you can't help wincing and thinking, "This has to be real. There's no way someone would act that stupidly for pay."
They do. They are. And people lap it up because it makes them feel better about themselves. "My inlaws may be crazy, but they're not bat-shit insane like the folks on that show." "Okay, my girlfriend is demanding but she isn't Snooki." "Sure, my brother's an asshole but he ain't no Situation."
It's a script. It's a character. This is not reality; This is people taking the piss and being paid handsomely to do it. MTV has always done this. They did it with their first video, "Video Killed The Radio Star", and they've been doing it ever since. They're at the top of their game, continuing to cut down culture with big broad swipes, and are doing such a good job that other stations ape them in the hopes of earning the money and respect they have. Of course, it doesn't work because MTV doesn't take itself seriously and has the presence of mind to write a script for its shows.
The rest of television has no such excuse. One by one, channels have fallen prey to reality-based programming because it's cheap to make and because people like watching other people acting stupidly on television. Why spend millions on a series that might flop in a week when you can spend a few thousand putting a camera in a convenience store with an angry man behind the counter who will cheerfully insult everyone unfortunate enough to step in the front door? Even if the show flops, you'll still make money just by getting the thing to air. And if you get a hit? Cue large piles of money walking up to your door to ask you how you did it and if they can invest in it or in the next one.
Syfy managed to hold out as best they could, but making movies, even TV movies, is expensive. So they knuckled under and brought in wrestling, a nice solid cash cow that they can milk for years to come, and thirty-one flavours of paranormal reality television(dear gods, an oxymoronic pun). In that, I think Syfy came off as the more disappointing but, really, there wasn't much of a contest.
Syfy sold out like the rest of television. MTV sold out because what they've been selling has always leapt off the shelves and that's Satire: hot, fresh and often still bleeding around the edges.
