MTV, Music Television, is shutting down music operations. Specifically in Englad. Likely soon to be the rest of Europe. I assume the US will happen without so much as a whimper.
But it's been dead for a while now, hasn't it?
Complaining about MTV had been old since the mid-00's. Even Gen-X, who lived off of MTV for a decade and a half, had drifted away from the music network before YouTube arrived and made MTV's music programming redundant.
Launched in 1981, MTV immediately became the default channel the latchkey kids of Gen X came home and put on instead of clicking on their radios (I am often reminded that Jamie did not have MTV, as she was raised in a town that might as well have had John Lithgow forbidding her to dance). Whether we're discussing elder Gen X or us on the trailing side of the generation, it was a true culture shift our parents would not enjoy until VH1 ushered Whitney Houston and Phil Collins safely into our homes.
But for a while, the cable channel became like a singular radio station shared by a huge swath of America, contributing to the 1980's monoculture, and ending the ability of musicians to be non-telegenic and still make it.
For the telegenic, it could mean a young The League would find himself watching the video for Lucky Star intently in 1984, and in the 1990's maybe watch En Vogue videos with piqued interest when he was more likely to listen to Jane's Addiction on his tape deck driving around North Houston.
Upon its debut, MTV was mostly rock and pop. My memory of the pre-1985 MTV is of a lot of Human League, John Cougar Mellencamp, Styx, Billy Idol, and whatever else was going on. Very early MTV included Joan Jett and J. Geils Band videos. My understanding is that MTV just didn't have many videos at launch unless it was from a European act who needed videos for Top of the Pops.
Between videos, VJ's (Video Jockeys), would drop fun tidbits and make it feel like a cool hang, I guess. Ask anyone into girls between 50 and 65 about Martha Quinn sometime and see them light up like a Christmas tree. I liked the VJ's until I didn't. Or when the VJ bit became the bit with things like Total Request Live (utterly unwatchable unless you were a 13 year old).
Seeing the immediate ability to get national exposure, bands rushed out to make videos, grabbing whatever they could in way of equipment and lighting. And the crazier or wilder your look, the better. Which became it's own thing as hair got bigger, pants got tighter, and pretty soon we had Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, after which we might as well have hung it up, because that was the zenith of early music videos.
Of course, I hadn't seen what would be the Mt. Everest of videos, Madonna's Express Yourself, which still lives rent-free in my head here in 2025.*
I'm ignoring Thriller here, and Michael Jackson's ascendency which was propelled by amazing videos for Beat It, Billie Jean and - of course, Thriller. But the two were made for each other, in a way I don't recall ending until after Scream.
After the first years of existence, MTV was more or less a Kingmaker. And sometimes it seemed like they were just messing with us. I cannot otherwise explain MTV's insistence on playing The Escape Club's Wild Wild West non-stop circa 1989.
In many ways, that sort of logic became the downfall of MTV. Rather than play a mix of music, MTV began a format in which, you could guarantee that you'd hear the same songs in what was about a 45 minute loop, interrupted with commercials. You like November Rain by Guns N' Roses? Great. Here's that same 9 minute fifteen second video again, twice this hour.
I think the assumption was that kids were going to tune away if they didn't hear the song they liked immediately, rather than kids would hang out until they got a chance to see that video was a bad bet, and made a lot of people tune away instead of stick around. But all I can report is that by 1992, I was watching far less MTV because it seemed they'd only play 5 or 6 videos in rotation during the day.
And I think their only take-away was "kids are watching less MTV when we show music" instead of "maybe once every two hours is plenty for Right Said Fred".
MTV introduced MTV Music News, running for small bits between videos, which covered loosely music related news but also kind of understood that it held a certain place to inform young TV viewers about world events, if through the lens of musicians discussing those events. But they also kept up with whatever was going on in the pop world, and that meant some interesting stuff - like the Rock the Vote campaign, which encouraged youth of age to get involved.
Also, Kurt Loder was not shy about non-stop coverage of Madonna, and it was hilarious.
The MTV Video Awards were a big thing for a while - maybe still are. But I think the only time I watched live was when Prince was on in 1991. I saw Madonna's 1990 Vogue performance after the fact when we were supposed to be pearl clutching, but it's just a solid dance performance. I still don't get what the big deal was. There is no scandal to be had.
Rightfully taking criticism in the mid-1980's from David Bowie and others, MTV had to grapple with the fact that they just didn't feature non-white artists, which, in the US since the 1950's, was a bit insane. America's musical roots stem from many places, but in the 20th Century, Black artists had been driving popular music from Jazz to Rock n' Roll to Rhythm and Blues to the unstoppable force of Hip-Hop.
They did take steps, and frankly I think seamlessly sorted the issue.
The challenge with Hip-Hop was how to make it work vis-a-vis genres. MTV had been for Rock and Roll and pop, but Hip-Hop was an undeniable force as the 1980's progressed. Yo! MTV Raps, a block of hip-hop programming hosted by two wacky guys, actually debuted first on MTV Europe (which blows my mind when I think about the New York hip-hop scene of the 1970's and 80's vis-a-vis the location of MTV's studios) and would debut in the US in 1988. It lasted until 1995, when it arguable became moot as Hip-Hop was a vital part of the everyday programming of the channel, and I'll argue that MTV played a huge part in the mainstreaming of Hip-Hop in suburban white-kid homes.
By the late 80's, Hollywood was trying to make movies look like music videos instead of videos trying to look like movies (sometimes). Pop art made its way into movies, and editing sped up to meet the beat of music. The same audience that was appealed to through basic cable subscriptions was enticed to theaters with films meant to evoke the same totally tubular lifestyle evinced in music videos.
I know what an impact MTV had on me. Thanks to a chance to see a video for Burning Down the House, I developed an interest in Talking Heads, which... they're still probably my favorite band. And...
After my older brother was gone from the house and no longer putting music in my hands, and I was in the wilds of Spring, Texas - not exactly the most progressive zone for music aficionados - my saving grace was 120 Minutes. It was a Sunday night two hour block of videos that showed "underground" music, or whatever the hell we called not-pop in the US in the 1980's and 90's before marketing folks lumped everything into "Alternative". 120 Minutes was MTV throwing music nerds a bone with an absolute ghetto of a timeslot, coming on at midnight on Monday mornings, when I had first bell for school at 7:30 AM in the morning. So, I'd stay awake and sneak out and start recording or stay up, hanging blankets over a glass door so my parents wouldn't see the light of the TV on at 1:00 AM.
While I had subscriptions to Spin and Rolling Stone, those were written recommendations and there was no ability to hear the bands in a pre-internet age. Not unless they got rotation on MTV, and often during 120 Minutes. It's where I first heard Lush, Curve, and even Nirvana. Not exactly obscure, but good luck hearing them elsewhere. It was the only place you had a chance of seeing videos by, like, The Pixies unless someone got daffy and played them mid-day when no one would notice. Even mainstream British acts like Pulp and Blur got their primary exposure there for years.
Probably the worst thing to ever happen to MTV was the 1987 arrival of Remote Control, a game show, that featured Colin Quinn not wanting to be there, Ken Ober delighted to have a job, and a rotating cast of hostesses, but I only remember Kari Wuhrer. The show must have been a huge hit, because it spawned more game shows, including the notorious Singled Out, which gave us Jenny McCarthy, and led indirectly into me having to do some tap-dancing to get my COVID vax this year.
What it taught MTV was that their audience need not be passive. They could create appointment viewing, just like a network. And, even better, just show re-runs any time they wanted.
Some of it was great. MTV brought Liquid Television to my screen and some alternative animation got an amazing platform. The first Beavis and Butthead cartoon showed up there, and we got Aeon Flux. They turned creator-owned comic The Maxx into an animated show unlike anything else at the time.
It was kind of wild, because up to this point, the cost for MTV had been a VJ talking to the camera. You were shelling out for Adam Curry's hair spray, a studio, etc... But it wasn't expensive to do. The programming was mostly music videos paid for by labels. They wanted that exposure to sell units at Sam Goody. The arrival of original programming told them that they could make even more money not just showing videos on a loop.
I think it was summer of 1993 that MTV invented Reality TV with The Real World, a documentary show which took a handful of randos, shoved them in a loft in New York and watched them try to navigate life as young adults.
On paper, it was a pretty good concept. In practical terms, it was a nightmare as the only real precedent was the 1970's PBS documentary An American Family, which was a harbinger of what was to come. The Loud family was forever altered by the experience, getting divorced during the filming. Just as the cast of the first few seasons of The Real World would feel reverberations in their own lives for years after, having no idea the real reach of television and how being yourself on camera is very different from among co-workers and family.
If The Real World had noble intentions, the roaring success of Singled Out led them to the correct conclusion that exploiting dumb, horny people and pretending it was real was the way to go. And that became all of their programming, from Teen Mom to Teen Wolf. It was really incredible that a channel with such a simple premise went insane and became the same channel that brought us Jackass, Jersey Shore, Road Rules, Road Rules Challenge, Road Rules Real World Challenge, etc... But no @#$%ing music.
I confess, one of the last years I really watched MTV was whenever the video dropped for The Beastie Boys' Sabotage. After that, the onslaught of MTV's reality programming and whatnot really hit, and I only had cable sporadically through college. By the time I had cable again around late 1998, I don't recall spending any time watching the channel.
Of course, Napster would arrive around this same time, CDs made music listening easier, and if you really liked a band, you might find their concerts or videos for sale at Suncoast or Camelot Records.
Now, the music industry is basically where it was in the Pre-WWII era. Making a career in music is, again, a ludicrous proposition unless you tour and gig 24/7. Ticket prices are about 300%, adjusted for inflation, of what I was paying in college for acts that aren't really even that big. And tickets to something like Lady Gaga are in the four-figure range if you want to be on the floor.
Paramount, who owns MTV, was recently bought by a billionaire dipshit's idiot kid, and now we're all living in the world of moneyed conspiracy dorks who surround themselves with Yes Men. I mean, I am sure they didn't see *enough* profit off of playing Tone Loc videos at 2:00 AM between ads for remedies for yeast infections, so, it is what it is. But do get ready for media to get really nutty as a single individual, not a corporation, is going to be dictating what you do and don't see.
I don't care in the slightest that MTV and it's various channels are going off the air. Trying to watch any MTV channel, including the nostalgia channels, had become painful as they averaged about 4 videos before a lengthy commercial break. And they'd play the same handful of videos over and over. Or this was true a decade ago when I last checked in. I mostly stream music and videos on YouTubeMusic on my TV. I haven't even included MTV in my personal cable line-up for a long time as I had no need to watch Ridiculousness. And that's what this genius billionaire's kid is planning to keep on the air.
Shocking that America seems so @#$%ing stupid right now.
But, yeah, for a while, for good or ill, we had MTV. And for a brief while, it did some good, maybe. As Skydance/ Paramount makes its moves, we can watch as they at last put that very ill dog down.
*we can discuss how Blondie's Heart of Glass and Siouxsie and the Banshees' Peek-a-Boo probably imprinted on me some other day
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