It started with a brief surge of “Friend Request” notices from Myspace. The same thing happened every time another Beauty and the Geek marathon ends up on the air. I didn’t realize it was on the air this time, but no biggie. A couple more seconds of my fifteen minutes of fame, right? But then I got a message from someone saying that she saw it on VH1.
“WHAT?!”
MTV bought the rights to the show—they were the ones playing the marathons to whet people’s appetites for Season 3 and kept playing them and playing them and playing them… But if MTV owned the rights to the show, how the hell did VH1 get permission from them to play the same marathons (and play them and play them…)?
I did a very brief amount of research using Google by typing in “VH1 MTV” and found the MTV website in England—it had a page specifically devoted to VH1. That’s right, kids, our worst fears have come to pass: there’s a monopoly on music videos on TV. I’ll never look at those undead zombies dancing around to “Thriller” the same way again…
