I was giving some thought to the lack of videos being played on MTV and VH1 the other night when I caught a few seconds of yet another countdown show about videos (this one, I believe, was about video cliches in Metal videos).
Over the past 10 or 20 years popular music (regardless of genre) has been a rapidly evolving beast where bands and music styles come and go in a year's time when it once took five or 10 years for similar changes.
I think the music industry can't keep up with the demand that music television has put on the performers. They've got to have new videos, new songs, new albums (CDs), new faces, and they've got to have it yesterday.
A radio station can play a song multiple times all day long (as long as the song is good), because of the listening trends of its audience. But a television station can't play the same video repeatedly in one day, it will lose viewership. So they've got to come up with other stuff: Road Rules, countdown shows, The Real World. Now, rather than playing music videos, they're in the business of putting on television shows that will get them ratings.
I'm indifferent to it because I wouldn't watch the videos any more than I watch the stoopid shows, but I do like "Best Week Ever."
I think the country music industry would disagree. There are two full time country music video channels (GAC and CMT) that do play videos almost all day long.