When the New York Times focused on MTV, they launched me into a crazy career flashback.

The article begins: "One morning earlier this spring, Dave Sirulnick and a group of fellow MTV executives gathered in a 29th-floor conference room overlooking Times Square to observe a time-honored television ritual, one they'd performed dozens of times."

I've been in that room. I've led that ritual. And the irony is - we may have been near the answer to some of those questions back in 1994.

When Dave Sirulnick and I Co-Exectutive Produced MTV UNfiltered, there was a gentle struggle between the stories that the audience wanted to tell, and the 'story' that the network itself told. Why? Because the truth is that high school is neither cool, nor hip, nor fun, nor sexy. It is - for most teens then and now - awkward, and uncomfortable, and really scary,

And so back in 1994 - when the 800# started ringing... it didn't stop. Why? Because after months of planning we'd done the unthinkable - and asked the audience to tell us their stories. And teens, so accustomed to being talked 'at' rather than listened to, were desperate to be heard.

Today - little has change, save for the fact that the folks at MySpace and YouTube (the two dueling monarchs of teen self-expression) have let the genie out of the bottle. Now MTV, which knew all this long before there was anything called the 'internet' - is struggling to catch up.

How they're going about it, and how most mainstream media companies are thinking about it - reflects the thinking of most professional media makers. The secret plan, the deeply held hope, the dreams that media execs dream in deep REM sleep is that this whole thing is simply about fractionalization. More platforms, more places for them to get to show their media stuff.

Yes, true it is less fun to play to smaller crowds. So having to make media for TV, VOD, Cell Phones, the Net, DVD's, iPods, and other places and devices means there's more time spent repurposing, and less time making actual shows.

But even with audience fragmentation - the media wise men figure, they'll still be able to turn their brands and channels into what most media consumers are hungry for.

MTV is betting on that. But in a moment of unvarnished honesty -MTV President Christina Norman told the Times "If anybody says they've figured this out right now, they haven't."

But it is figured it out. By kids who now spend thier time making TV rather than watching it. Search on "Stupid Stunts" on YouTube and you'll get more teen antics than MTV could ever hope for. No Advertiser standards, no FCC, no Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. On the web any wardrobe that comes off is coming off on purpose. Now that may not be entertainment - and in fact it may simply be porn - but user-generated content is fast eclipsing MTV (and CBS, and CNN, and PBS) as the most created, shared, viewed and forwarded form of media ever know.

Which brings me back to that conference room at MTV in 1994. We were watching a video shot by a teenage boy who'd painted his room black, his windows black, wore only black clothes, and wouldn't leave his room. He did have a TV, and had seen UnFiltered on it. So we'd fed ex'ed him a camera - and he'd taken us on a tour of his room and his gloom.

This was before anyone was voted off any island, or before real world got too real. But in this video - there was the roots of user-generated content. And MTV had it in their hands. At the time, i'd been sure that a we could have embraced the viewers and given them a voice that could have become a network all its own.

But it wasn't to be. MTV wanted to talk. I wanted to listen.

And now everything has changed.

Media is being made, not consumed. Cell phones are content makers - not simply passive receiving dishes. And the 'niches' that content is created for is increasingly not any larger than a some group of friends. Can MTV monetize my son and his 6 friends making videos for each other and sharing them on the web? Not from a conference room on the 29th floor of Times Square.