So, I’m watching this video I found on ONTD that’s a promo for a new MTV reality show called Jersey Shore. I’m trapped in a place between wondering if this is an excellent parody, or if MTV is just the lowest-quality producer of entertainment in the universe. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some True Life and Made and I could watch original Real World for DAYS, but this? I feel like I’ve gotten crabs just from watching it.

MTV circulated this internal memo today:

As you know, we’ve been holding information sessions over the past several days to discuss our freelance and temporary employee benefits. We’ve had many insightful conversations and heard a number of your specific concerns.

As a result of the input you’ve given to us directly through the sessions and your managers, we want to announce the following changes:

· We are expanding our freelance and temporary medical and dental benefits options to include the United Healthcare plan under which many of you are currently covered. This means anyone who is eligible for benefits in 2008 can opt for medical and dental coverage with United Healthcare at the current rate of contribution, or you can elect instead to enroll in the newly offered Aetna plan.

The Aetna plan has certain advantages that may make it the preferred option for many of our freelance and temporary employees. Based on your input, however, we want to make sure that those of you who prefer the United Healthcare plan have that option.

· As a result of this change, the freelance and temporary employee payroll conversion to Cast and Crew has been delayed until February 1, 2008. Therefore, the December 14th deadline to submit your Cast and Crew paperwork has been postponed. We will inform you of the new deadline early in the New Year.

· We’ve implemented a process for evaluating freelance and temporary employee positions for possible conversion to staff positions. This process is currently underway and decisions will be communicated by January 31st, 2008.

Way to go, MTV/Viacom!!!

Remember how I told you about this???

STRIKES ARE CONTAGIOUS! The WGA strike seems to be giving everyone else the guts to stage their own.

Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits.

The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.

Waving signs that read “Shame on Viacom,” the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning Jan. 1.

Pay the employees what they’re owed, Viacom!!!

I guess strikes are contagious.

When MTV presented its freelancers with a new plan that includes no 401K, reduced health benefits and no paid vacation (they’re freelancers, isn’t that what they’re supposed to get?), they decided to stage a walk-out on Monday, and they’re trying to get the whole company involved.

Above find the memo that’s been circulating around the company.

The best group category proves once again how tragically out-of-touch with the under-24 culture I am becoming. I guess I recognize most of these names, but, with the exception of Fall Out Boy, I can’t name a single one of their songs. I just want to curl up in my room and listen to August and Everything After. Is that so wrong? Is it? Anyway, the nominees are:

Fall Out Boy
Gym Class Heroes
Linkin Park
Maroon 5
The White Stripes

The best new artist category confuses me, because most of these people aren’t new artists. I mean, Carrie Underwood won American Idol in 1994, right? Amy Winehouse had an album go platinum in the U.K. in 2003. How exactly are we defining “new” in this context? And can someone please tell me what song Gym Class Heroes and Peter Bjorn & John gets played on the radio? I even Googled them and I couldn’t figure it out.

Lily Allen
Gym Class Heroes
Peter Bjorn & John
Carrie Underwood
Amy Winehouse

The best female artist nominees don’t matter, because Rihanna’s going to win and Beyonce’s going to be sooo pissed about it.

Beyonce
Fergie
Nelly Furtado
Rihanna
Amy Winehouse

And I don’t know any of the songs by anyone in the best male artist category, either, except for JT. Oh, Akon does “Smack That,” which, if I recall correctly, was already awarded Song of the Year by Ms. magazine, so I don’t know that it really needs this accolade as well. Let someone else have a chance. The noms:

Akon
Robin Thicke
T.I.
Justin Timberlake
Kanye West

The VMAs will air on September 9th on MTV.

In the wake of Paris now doing hard time the MTV awards have been washed away in a sea of somehow being even less relevant. But I feel in my heart you want some stills. Here, have some stills!

Do you voluntarily abstain from sex? Have you made the decision to be celibate for personal or religious reasons? Are you a virgin? Are you about to become celibate because being sexually active just isn’t working for you anymore? Or maybe you’re already celibate and struggling to stay that course? Or are about to ease your way back into sexually active life after a period of celibacy?

If so, MTV’s documentary series True Life wants to hear from you. Are you struggling to refrain from having sex, while it’s all that your friends and the media can talk about? Are you facing pressure from your boyfriend or girlfriend to give in? Do people give you a hard time about your decision, or do they discriminate against you for choosing not to have sex?

If you’d like to tell the world why you’re saying no to sex, we want to hear your story! If you appear to be between the ages of 18 and 28 and have a story for us about your decision to remain celibate, email us with the details of your story at celibate@mtvnmix.com.

Please be sure to include your name, phone number, location, and photo if possible.

This is some sad ass news.

But the article is super fun so let’s probe (with our prober).

MTV’s Total Request Live is no longer totally live…. Two weeks ago, MTV began taping Total Request Live two days a week in an effort to save money.

Total Request Taped? No, the show’s title won’t be adjusted for the less-than-live days, spokeswoman Marnie Black said Tuesday.

TRL needs to save money. Presumably for soup.

I also need to salute the writer of this article, David Bauder for his hip use of slang. Check it out:

(TRL is where) Artists go to “drop” new music, movie stars to tout new films and celebrities just to stay celebrities

See how he did that? He made it approachable for the cool hipsters reading his “shizz.” He even quoted that monster “drop” so that you knew he was down with the slang.

This comes after the announced layoffs last month and it all adds up to one thing: Sucking killed the MTV star.

Bunim-Murray Productions is beginning casting for the 20th — and what may be the last — season of Real World. Bunim-Murray’s contract with MTV ends after this season, and, while they may or may not renew, it seems they are hoping this twentieth season will be maybe a little less vapid and hyper-sexed than the previous, oh, fifteen seasons. Reads the release:

For Real World’s upcoming 20th season, we are searching for cast members with career and life goals that they want to pursue in a major metropolitan city.

Aspiring actors, models, dancers, filmmakers, musicians, athletes, artists, journalists, stylists, and fashion designers are particularly encouraged to apply, as well anyone else with interesting career goals and a passion to succeed.

So, basically, if you’re a drama queen with a dream, Real World wants you. Working ’round the clock to cure cancer? No thanks. Engineering a next-generation alternative-fuel vehicle? Tell it to The Discovery Channel. Do you become particularly bitchy when your Ferragamo blouse becomes wrinkled by your football-standout roommate/sometime hook-up in a late-night drunken grabfest because you were totally going to wear it to your interview with Vogue tomorrow? MTV WANTS YOU AND YOUR GOALS!

Pop culture’s summary rejection of any career path with even a marginal chance of improving the quality of life for anyone not regularly featured in Us Weekly may seem to be the most depressing aspect of this article. Not true. Here’s the most depressing part: I have aged out of The Real World. I thought it would never happen, but it did. It’s not like I ever really wanted to audition, I just wanted to know that I still could. But the dream is over. I am officially too old for The Real World. This is what adulthood feels like, I suppose. My stomach hurts.

And my depression is furthered by the comments left by the fucking fetuses who are upset that they are too young to ever have their shot at drunkenly flashing their breasts and denying their eating disorders week after precious week for a national audience.

Exhibit 1:

PLEASE DONT LET THIS BE TRUE I’LL CRY I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ON THE REAL WORLD IM 15 THIS YEAR GONNA BE 16 SO WHEN I WAS GOPNNA BE 18 I WAS GONNA DROP COLLEGE OMG I FEEL DEPRESSED SERIOUSLY!! OMG nooo!! it cant im gonna send in a video!

Exhibit 2:

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ll be 18 in six months, and i’m totally in love with the Real World. There are so many cities to go to, PLZ, just a few more seasons.

These people weren’t even born when The Real World premiered. To them, the name Pedro is synonomous with an iconic class president candidate, not American youth’s initial face of the AIDS epidemic. They don’t even deserve to be on this show if they don’t remember how it started, when there was substance and meaning and insight and, just, ARGH.

I am so old.

I suppose it should be refreshing that the latest celebrity to launch a fashion line actually went to fashion school. Lauren Conrad, former star of Laguna Beach and the last bastion of likability on The Hills (I liked you for one day, Heidi. But then you got back with Spencer and I remembered you suck.), is launching her own fashion line — digitally, on Virtual Hills.

This is more an MTV story than a Lauren Conrad story. Poor MTV has been flailing in the online arena lately, as more of their target demographic turns away from the television and onto the Internet, ignoring MTV Overdrive and the like for social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. MTV fought back last month by laying off 250 employees and announcing plans to focus on online operations.

They’re trying to hype Virtual Hills and Virtual Laguna Beach here, and they’re using Lauren to help out. Says the PR release:

The introduction of Lauren’s physical and virtual world fashion lines takes the concept of personal expression to new heights for a generation of viewers who take their online persona as seriously as their real-world presence. Reflecting the casual yet smart aesthetic of her real-world attire, the virtual clothing line inspired by Lauren will make its debut in Virtual Hills tonight (http://www.virtualhills.mtv.com), March 6th at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, where fans will be able to buy clothes with in-world currency.

So, if you’re a teenage girl whose avatar would look cute in Lauren’s clothing, you should check this out. And, if you’re one of the 43-year-old male perverts composing 82% of the Virtual Hills community, with an avatar who would look cute in Lauren’s clothing, you should definitely check this out.

If you actually want to buy Lauren’s clothing line, so you can wear its pieces on your real-life body, no dice. They won’t be in stores until later this year, if ever, because, you know, that’s not really MTV’s priority right now. Hey, Lauren: you should have gone to Paris.