I'm aware, OK? I get it. People die every time someone snaps their fingers.

It's like some kind of reverse It's a Wonderful Life angel getting their wings thing.

I spent my entire Saturday afternoon, as I usually do, on the couch in front of the television "recuperating" and "resting" from the night before and waiting for the night to come.

It was a good day. There was this thing, you've probably heard about it, called Live 8 taking place Saturday afternoon all around the world.

It was pretty sweet ... if you knew how to watch it.

MTV and VH1 broadcast the concert simultaneously on television, focusing heavily on Philadelphia and London coverage -- probably because no one from MTV was thinking "Gosh, I really just want to go to Johannesburg to cover a Ladysmith Black Mombazo concert" when they could get the chance to talk to Jay-Z.

The conclusion I drew from MTV/VH1 -- besides the whole kids dying in Africa every three seconds thing, which I was kind of already aware of -- was that every three seconds, Viacom networks air a commercial.

And that during the time Viacom airs a commercial, 80 kids in Africa die.

I'm not kidding. I used the calculator on my computer to figure that one out.

MTV's coverage of the event, too, was an outright disaster.

They faded back to inane commentary with two minutes still left to go in Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb."

They showed me Maroon 5 butchering the hell out of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" (Adam Levine made me want watch the commercials, or pictures of the children all skinny and dying).

I didn't need to see that.

In typical MTV fashion they reported on the hype and the PR of the event, not the actual story itself.

I have absolutely no idea just how kids dying in Africa affects me, or how much money that could be given. I have a feeling its something that sounds as shocking as kids die when you snap your fingers, something like "For the equivalence of one dollar a year, we can seriously end poverty."

People respond to things like that, it's like infomercials.

And half of the stuff wasn't live.

I don't want to see a three-hour old performance of Linkin Park. I saw them in the Bryce Jordan Center, and I don't really want to see them again ... ever.

I was so frustrated with MTV's coverage I resorted to other means.

I called my dad, who was at the Philly concert, and tried to listen to it on my cell phone. That didn't really work. And plus, he said that Linkin Park was the only act that got the terribly sunburned crowd really hyped up because of the whole Jay-Z mash up thing (if you didn't notice Jay-Z stomped on Chester Bennington a few times, flowing when there was supposed to be whiny, 15-year-old-level-of-maturity screaming).

I tried flipping back and forth between MTV and VH1, but they were actually broadcasting identical feeds, the only difference was they ran different commercials.

Viacom 2, Tim 0.

Then I had my moment of genius. The Internet! The Internet! They like to stream things with low-quality sound and video!

I was surprised -- because it actually turned out to be watchable.

And because only one of my two speakers now works (thanks to playing "Whoa!" by Black Rob too much), the sound quality was fine -- at least to my used-to-bad-sound ears.

And I didn't hear pointless VJ banter (although the MTV England girl was pretty sassy), which is always a bonus.

I can cut MTV a break because they're not really used to covering things that matter -- like kids dying or a band that is talented enough to back up its own hype -- but they still made me mad.

AOL was the real winner here. They streamed me all music (no banter), and I can watch Pink Floyd's unbelievable performance whenever I want. AOL gets cool points.

I still don't know about the children, though. We do need to save the children here, but I think they lost in all this because I still don't know how that happens.

I signed that Internet petition at www.one.org, but how does that help?

I'm still confused here, people. We need to save these damned children!

The only thing I really learned was that AOL was cool (I already had suspicions of incompetence over at MTV, and I did know that kids die).

And, again, I wish I was British.