Captive Audience

There are three TVs at the gym M* and I joined for our last two months in Cambridge. The TVs are positioned in a row in front of the cardio machines, and I was looking forward to catching up on programs that I'd missed this year, as we don't have a TV. Unlike gyms I've belonged to in the past, you cannot change these channels. The set on left is set to a video channel, B4, the middle one is all-news BBC 24 and the one on the right is another video channel, The Hits.

Since I've only had cable for a total of two years, I am not very familiar with music videos, and I am blown-away by the pornification of the modern video. There have always been sexy women, much less often men, in music videos, but there were also cutting edge, artier videos to balance them out. It's not just male groups/ singers have a room of bikini-clad women all vying for the chance to seduce them (although there is plenty of that), it's the female singers writhing on the floor, slithering through the legs of Amazons in short skirts and glancing longingly at the camera. What's worse is that the two video channels often repeat the same videos. How does a 24 hour news channel reviewing the endorphin-killing issues of the day get any attention when surrounded by barely covered large breasts, jiggling bums and stunning, pouty-lipped visages? I've contemplated asking the gym to change one of the channels to an all-sports station. I'd so prefer to work-out to a cricket match.

I do have to say that occasionally The Hits plays music videos on a theme, which can be a fun trip down memory lane. Last Sunday it was Best of the Electronic 80s—Michael Jackson, Culture Club, Band Aid, Wham—I didn't turn my iPod on once. Even the super cheesy video for the super cheesy song "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off (To Have a Good Time)" was more palatable than Beyoncé's tortuous new Green Light video