Hard times at MTV: Total Request goes to tape

American MTV's flagship show, Total Request Live, is no longer going to be live. Tuesdays and Thursdays, MTV is now showing a programme taped the day before. It's a money-saving measure (some might say penny-pinching), but MTV angrily deny that just because the programme is now recorded, anything's different:

[S]pokeswoman Marnie Black said Tuesday "we're not editing anything. We're not changing anything. The spirit of the show is going to be exactly the same."

However, since a key component of the show is for viewers to spend money texting the programme, it's hard to see how that can be true. After all, texting a programme that's on tape? That sort of thing couldn't happen here, could it?