Bye, Bye, Childhood

MTV announced this week that, after ten years on the air, they will pull the plug on TRL this November. This makes me sad, not because I still watch TRL, but because I associate TRL very closely with my younger years. I can still remember the first time I watched it. It was the summer of 1998 (I think) and I was volunteering at a summer day camp with a bunch of my friends from school (because we all needed community service credit before confirmation). A bunch of them were talking about some show called Total Request on MTV, and I pretended that I watched it as well. Not wanting to feel left out, I went home that afternoon and immediately put it on. I can still remember the first video I saw: Aaliyah's "Are You You That Somebody?" (everytime I hear the song I still think of TRL and that summer). Over the next four or five years, I probably watched it at least 3 times week (usually during the times it was on at 5:00, because then I could watch it after practice). TRL exposed me to a lot of music I'd never heard before and it gave me Britney Spears (something for which I will be forever grateful). I always liked Carson Daly as host, and I even liked the people that succeeded him, but I haven't watched TRL since I went away to college, and I'm guessing that the younger generation that should have taken up the TRL mantle has turned to YouTube for their music videos instead. I understand that just like everything else on TV, TRL too has reached its end, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.