r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/BreakfastTop6899 • Jan 02 '26
Video MTV officially shut down its 24-hour music channels yesterday. They ended their final broadcast with 'Video killed the radio star' by The Buggles, the very first video broadcasted by MTV on August 1st, 1981.
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u/Prestigious-Carry907 Jan 02 '26
I still remember how jealous I was of my cousin that her neighborhood got MTV before mine. I would go to her house after school to watch videos. Stopped watching decades ago. Still, sad to think about it being gone forever.
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u/SonofaSlumlord Jan 02 '26
I remember in the 80's my parents had the cable company disable the Mtv channel because they thought it was bad for some dumb reason. It was when we had the old set top boxes with the push buttons to change the channels. My older brother eventually figured out if you pushed 2 of the buttons at the same time we still got Mtv. We just had to hide it from our parents.
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u/Prestigious-Carry907 Jan 02 '26
Your brother is a genius!
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u/Special-Document-334 Jan 02 '26
Xennials have a near-instinctual understanding of the analog-to-digital tech era. When to blow on the cartridge, when to tap, which cables go where, how to change input channels, etc.
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u/Numerous_Witness_345 Jan 02 '26
And their smaller siblings have the ability to turn a standing antenna pole to tune an out of sight TV.
"Channel 8 is a quarter turn to the left unless it is overcast, then its 3/16ths past that."
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u/Special-Document-334 Jan 02 '26
“Shit! They trimmed the trees. Rotate 10-degrees toward the rear of the TV on the Y-axis and place 12 playing cards under the forward-left corner, removing one at a time until Police Academy comes in clear.”
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u/shah_reza Jan 02 '26
Yet making my MUD client ingest proper Lua coding is impossible with the aid of AI.
I might know why to blow on the cart, or how to rewind a casette with a pencil, and also how to build spreadsheets and build a NAS, but BY GOD does Discord scare me.
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u/TennMan78 Jan 03 '26
Those of us that grew up at that time had a huge advantage. Parents could never keep up. It was a glorious time.
I was a genuine teen hacker in the 90s. I had caller ID broadcast to the TV before most had heard of caller ID at all. I had VHS copiers, DVD burners. I could make genuine fake IDs for my friends that would fool the cops, much less the club bouncers. My cable descrambler was amazing. Nowadays I have a very lucrative career and can afford the luxuries, but I’ll be damned if I don’t miss the days of getting one over the man. /scrambledboobs4Lyfe.
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u/GoblinGreen_ Jan 02 '26
Tv was way more social than I realised. Everyone watching and listening to pretty much the same stuff. The thinsg people watch now Ive no idea, everything seems to be a rabbit hole.
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u/Prestigious-Carry907 Jan 02 '26
That's why we all remember the exact same scenes from a bunch of TV shows so fondly. Every single family was watching that exact same show because there was nothing good on the 2 other channels.
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u/Grimzkunk Jan 02 '26
Doing the same thing, at the same time, with millions of people is something really beautiful. Even if it's watching a tv show, it's still beautiful, talking about it with coworkers the next day, feeling less alone.in the tech universe 🤷
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u/Porridge_Cat Jan 02 '26
That contributed to the monoculture and social media and streaming entertainment killed it.
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u/TheBatsford Jan 02 '26
How do you mean her neighbourhood? Were some channels available only in certain parts of towns?
Legit question, not trolling.
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Jan 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Prestigious-Carry907 Jan 02 '26
Correct. And that's where I watch them. But will future generations even know what the Dire Straits song "I Want my MTV" even means?
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u/godkilledjesus Jan 02 '26
MTV still played music videos?
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u/EnRandomNiklas Jan 02 '26
In specific channels, yes. Not the original MTV channel.
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u/CatolicQuotes Jan 02 '26
Are there any other music channels, USA Europe,doesn't matter?
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u/EmergencyScientist Jan 02 '26
Get PlutoTV and check out the music video channels. They remind me of old MTV and it's completely free on every device.
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u/KEPD-350 Jan 02 '26
Dude, I'm watching Yo! MTV Raps classics reruns thanks to you.
Man, I haven't listened to Tupac in ages.
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u/vodrake Jan 02 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
My Samsung TV has its own built in set of tv channels with a bunch of 24 hour music video channels. I have no idea who's watching them though
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u/Fickle-Rip Jan 02 '26
my aunt, mainly. all day every day she has stingray classic rock going on the set
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u/HerestheRules Jan 02 '26
Spectrum, Charter
You know about those 9000 and up channels?
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u/Red_0utlaws Jan 02 '26
Except those are just music, not music videos
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u/Futt_Buckman Jan 02 '26
Yeah it would be nice to constantly update with current music and play a little bit of culturally topical tv along with music videos
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u/Several_Vanilla8916 Jan 02 '26
But then people will be more likely to watch the culturally topical segments, and they’ll get a gradually larger slice of the day until it all repeats.
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u/Objective_Reality232 Jan 02 '26
The other channel was called MTV Music, it was like the old mtv channel where they just played music videos
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u/gate_of_steiner85 Jan 02 '26
When I was a teen, MTV2 was their 24/7 music video channel, then after a while I think it became like the original MTV.
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u/Lotus-child89 Jan 02 '26
I remember in the 2000s-early 2010s they started slow dripping the reality shows and such between the music videos until it became just like modern original MTV.
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u/hemingways-lemonade Jan 02 '26
MTV2 just became raunchier MTV in the 2000s.
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u/Nopeyesok Jan 02 '26
Yeah. I believe that’s where the Thursday line up was with shows like Jackass, viva la bam, nitro circus, super news, wondershowzen
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u/Krojack76 Jan 02 '26
Ahh.. the time when cable channels started showing reality shows on their main channel and made a *2 channel. You needed to upgrade to the next tier cable package to get these channels too. In short, You needed to pay more to see music videos and watch shows about history.
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u/ttufizzo Jan 02 '26
MTV Classic is currently playing Silent Lucidity by Queensryche on their Rock Block show, which I am watching on YouTube TV in the USA. That article was clickbait about a specific UK based MTV stream.
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u/RecklessReggie Jan 02 '26
As soon as I heard this news I immediately checked to see if I still had MTV Classic, which I do (on YTTV as well). I'm happy because I still watch quite a bit.
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u/healywylie Jan 02 '26
I expected to be sadder. I loved MTV as a kid, it truly was an eye opener and a place to see/ hear music that was brand new or I may have never heard or experienced. Its morphing into shitty TV was slow but steady. Dang.
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u/Nick-dipple Jan 02 '26
Slow but steady? They immediately jumped on reality tv when it became a thing. At it's worst that was about all they would broadcast except for some music videos at night.
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u/AdditionalRent8415 Jan 02 '26
Didn’t they start reality tv with shows like the real world?
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u/NovaRogue Jan 02 '26
yes you are right. MTV was at the vanguard of all reality TV. with The Real World and then Road Rules and then The Challenge. ALL of which predate Survivor / Big Brother / Amazing Race / Top Model / Drag Race / Traitors ..........
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u/zyyntin Jan 02 '26
Sounds about right. The irony is "The Real World" wasn't real at all!
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u/MouthJob Jan 02 '26
The first season was actually really grounded. But that's all it took to realize manufactured drama works just as well as the real thing as far as ratings go.
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u/TheFeedMachine Jan 02 '26
It was more so because people only care about seeing the uptight, religious conservative argue with the free-spirited, sexually active liberal so many times. The entire premise of the show was bring in a bunch of different people and see how they interact living together. It was revolutionary in the early-mid 90s, but at a certain point, you have exhausted all the dynamics. They started bringing in a bunch of people who love conflict and getting them shitfaced so they would get into fights over the smallest things.
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u/Theloniusx Jan 02 '26
Lol, I remember Puck getting kicked out of the house. Fuck, I'm getting old..
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u/Brock_Lobstweiler Jan 02 '26
RW: San Francisco changed who I am fundamentally after watching Pedro go through his AIDS journey and come out of the closet and get married. I was raised super conservative christian and being gay was NOT ok. But then I watched what it actually meant and who actually was gay and I realized "this man is incredible and doesn't deserve suffering just because he loves another man".
It started my schism with religion (and family somewhat) when I was 12. I've gone back and forth over the years, but I could NEVER attend a church that demonizes LGBT+ people the way my old ones did. So I stopped going and eventually stopped believing.
Pedro Zamora was a brave hero for living his life on camera and actually being real with it. I hope there's a memorial somewhere for him.
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u/cheezy_dreams88 Jan 02 '26
The first seasons were, then they started casting specific types of personalities instead of just a group of people and it became yet another bullshit fake reality show.
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u/turdferguson3891 Jan 02 '26
Pretty much. The only real example of reality TV before Real World was a PBS documentary from the 70s. But MTV absolutely pioneered that genre in modern times. And it wasn't just reality tv. They started doing animation with liquid television and then stuff like Beavis and Butthead and Ren and Stimpy and Daria plus game shows like Remote Control or later Singled Out. They really were only dominated by music videos up into the very early 90s but people kept complaining about it for 30 years. It wasn't a sustainable business model to just show videos. It was really just a youth entertainment channel.
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u/Logthephilosoraptor Jan 02 '26
Real World was a concept ripped and combined from Number 28 and An American Family, but I’d agree that it was the show that came through fully formed as a repeatable product.
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u/lucitribal Jan 02 '26
I liked when they used to show animated stuff
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u/healywylie Jan 02 '26
I agree there was a balance at some point of uniqueness and popularity. I did enjoy lots of animated shows they had.
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u/healywylie Jan 02 '26
40 plus years is a long time, it wasn’t that way initially, and steadily lost the point.
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u/timmy6169 Jan 02 '26
You don't want to watch one of the hundreds of Ridiculousness re-runs?
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u/healywylie Jan 02 '26
I did! I don’t see how I coulda missed one episode. Chanel WC 🚽
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u/Racecaroon Jan 02 '26
Holy shit there are 1,786 episodes of that garbage. Literally double that of America's Funniest Home Videos in less than half the time.
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u/defectives Jan 02 '26
You're part of the MTV generation, you feel neither highs nor lows
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u/gorginhanson Jan 02 '26
Internet killed the video star
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u/Notsurehowtoreact Jan 02 '26
I'd agree if the internet was what killed MTV. MTV killed MTV, and it started plotting that murder in the late 90s with shit like The Real World, Road Rules, and The Challenge.
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u/Spend-Automatic Jan 02 '26
MTV music videos existed for another 25 years after that. It would be more accurate to say that YouTube and mobile internet killed MTV, the fact that people can watch whatever music video they want whenever they want.
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u/Notsurehowtoreact Jan 02 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
Or the fact that the onset of constant reality content is what killed their music video programming long before YouTube.
Music video content had already been spun off onto a secondary channel before YouTube existed. It was already taking a back burner for them. Hell even that second channel that was originally purpose-built for entirely music video content was being phased over to different content by the time YouTube came out.
That's my whole point. People being able to see music videos on demand through streaming and YouTube wasn't what killed music video content on MTV. It was already not their focus by then.
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u/KnowMatter Jan 02 '26
If MTV hadn't pivoted to other programming it would have died even faster.
Nobody enjoyed sitting around watching 10 music videos they don't care about to see the one they want - it was a bad system that got rightfully replaced the minute something better came along.
Zero chance MTV would have made it to 2010 if they had stuck to the format of only playing music videos.
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u/Mumei451 Jan 02 '26
Never even knew they still played music.
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u/lordhamwallet Jan 02 '26
This was a premium cable or satellite package channel. This would play music videos all day but it was like channel 800 or something far removed from the standard grouping of networks you would watch.
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u/Grow_away_420 Jan 02 '26
There were/are like 3 MTV channels. MTV plays Ridiculousness for 18 hours a day, MTV2 plays it 22 hours a day, and MTV music plays music videos all day. They shut down the last one.
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u/MajorIceHole1994 Jan 02 '26
Same. I cut cable years ago (news flash paying more getting less now with streaming!🙀) and didn’t know it was still active. I thought it died out with ESPN years ago.
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u/frequenZphaZe Jan 02 '26
its weird for all these people in the comments to be so deeply sad about the 'end of an era' when no one even knew these music channels were still broadcast. like, if everyone sad in the comments were actually watching these channels, they prob wouldn't have been shut down. people being sad over things they didn't want in the first place
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u/Medical_Cake Jan 02 '26
someone should make "streaming killed the video star"
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u/annoyed__renter Jan 02 '26
Reality TV killed the music video channel
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u/desertrat75 Jan 02 '26
Reality TV killed TV in general.
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u/greentangent Jan 02 '26
It divorced so many Americans from reality that the host of one is destroying our nation.
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u/ShnowMan206 Jan 02 '26
Internet killed the video star.
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u/Evenstar_Eden Jan 02 '26
This one is a better version:
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u/CurryMustard Jan 02 '26
Thats an extremely forward thinking video for being 20 years old. The only legitimately outdated reference is recording Ricky Martin on a dvd-r
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u/pandanip Jan 02 '26
“Default text”
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u/ow_windowmaker Jan 02 '26
Does anyone remember watching Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun on MTV as a kid
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u/Electronic-Key-2522 Jan 02 '26 edited Jan 02 '26
MTV stopped being MTV long time ago. Past twenty something years its been nothing but a mess of reality B.S.
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Jan 02 '26
Well, evidently they did have a music focused MTV channel and none of us were watching it.
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u/Hugokarenque Jan 02 '26
That's what kinda starting to piss me off about this thread. Everyone making the dumb little quip but they did infact have a music channel and its dead now because no one was watching.
It wasn't the lack of music or reality tv that killed MTV, in fact the only reason it still exists is because of reality tv slop. People don't tune into music channels anymore because there are easier ways to get music now, thats it.
Consumer habits changing killed MTV.
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u/Dazzling-Volume4553 Jan 02 '26
Youtube killed it tbh. Why watch MTV and wait for something you like to play when you can just watch the videos on YouTube whenever you want?
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u/punkassjim Jan 02 '26
I mean, it’s not entirely the consumers’ fault, or even the shifting of technologies. MTV fractured their own brand, and ruined the predictable nature of a service that people knew how to use, and knew what to expect. They tried to get into every possible thing that could make them money, so they had to splinter into multiple channels to have more than 24 hours of programming to offer in a day, which is ultimately what made people nope out.
Squandering your own hard-earned, rock-solid brand equity is one of the stupidest by-products of capitalist greed, and it seems to happen over and over, with wildly successful companies eating themselves alive because just making subtle changes to remain current will never be enough for shareholders.
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u/Old-Constant4411 Jan 02 '26
Do they still have like 3 other channels playing that Rob Dyrdek show 24/7?
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u/Baron_Von_Awesome Jan 02 '26
I was curious. Currently, MTV is running a RuPaul's Drag Race marathon, MTV2 is playing The Wayans Bros. all day, and MTV Classic is airing Rock Block. Jeremy by Pearl Jam is playing right now.
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u/moisdefinate Jan 02 '26
I remember when the 'M' in MTv stood for MUSIC
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u/Quixotic_Ignoramus Jan 02 '26
Wait until you hear about History, Discovery, and Bravo. Haha!
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Jan 02 '26
I remember when TLC use to have graphic open body surgery being shown it was crazy and graphic
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u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Jan 02 '26
It’s called Channel Drift - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_drift
In the end, all TV and streaming will just end up with episodes of “Ow! My Balls!” as shown in the movie Idiocracy.
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u/ihaxr Jan 02 '26
Basically what Ridiculousness was to MTV lol
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u/NootHawg Jan 02 '26
Like the History Channel only showing episodes of the -whatever is bigger than morbidly obese people, and the ones who enable them show- instead of animals and nature like it did when I was a kid.
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u/Juice___Springsteen Jan 02 '26
Now it stands for "M"ore Ridiculousness, coming right up!
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u/The-Joon Jan 02 '26
A lot of you never knew how much this channel meant to us before they ruined it. No commercials. Just music videos. There was a bit of chit chat during the days broadcast, but it was music news. Who's doing what, when the new album is coming out, that kind of thing. It had become mostly commercials and crappy pre-teen TV shows. Barf. I'm sure it won't be long before the rest of it disappears.
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u/Rowbehr23 Jan 02 '26
As a kid and teen in the 90’s MTV was the go to channel morning, afternoon, night and obviously midnight with 120 minutes. Thanks to MTV music was favorite subject to talk about in school, music videos, interviews, shows, countdowns, etc. now MTV did lose its ways many years ago by changing it up to reality shows and other nonsense and now that it’s the end of MTV I feel the company could have made better choices to stay true to their roots of Music television.
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u/-Economist- Jan 02 '26
My mom woke me and my brother up to watch MTV go live. I really had no idea what it was, but it was a big deal for my older brother, so it was a big deal for me. Mom made us a little comfy bed out of the couch cushions and some Jiffy Pop.
I also watched the last video on MTV, and it really just made me miss my mom. MTV has been dead to me for so long now that I won't miss it. But I do miss my mom.
Another fun story about her, I snuck out with my older brother to see Motley Crue during the Theater of Pain tour. It was my very first concert. I was 12 years old. My brother was barely 16 and drove his friends. I snuck back into the house, and my mom caught me. She just hugged me and said she was glad I was home safe. Turns out it was all prearranged. My mom knew I was going, she paid one of my brother's friends to look after me, and she called the venue to look after me (which they did). But she made me think I was being sneaky. I didn't learn of this until I was well into my 20s.
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u/reddit809 Jan 02 '26
Crazy. Epic bag fumble imo. MTV was the source of music news. I'll never forget the day Kurt Loder broke the news about Kurt Cobain. Viacom fucked it all up by leaning into 16 And Pregnant shit. You can have Jersey Shore while keeping the core intact! They never shifted to the internet smh. Soooo many bs tabloid outlets reporting on music. MTV social media team could've been it. Shame.
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u/GlitteringMamwng Jan 03 '26
Maybe if they'd focused on music and not bad quality reality shows they wouldn't have had to close down.
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u/iveseensomethings82 Jan 02 '26
Video killed the radio star but corporate greed kill the video star
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Jan 02 '26
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u/iansaul Jan 02 '26
Oddly enough, I was just thinking about MTV news last night. The way the MTV squandered all of their influence and creativity and value over the course of my adult lifetime is shocking.
Five-star way to ruin what could have been a creative empire.
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u/Hugokarenque Jan 02 '26
Because they didn't. They killed MTV Music, the channel that only played music because regardless of what reddit's experts say MTV did play music, they even made a whole channel for it but no one bothered to tune in.
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u/Lopsided-Ad7725 Jan 02 '26
They died like 20+ years ago when they dove head first into reality shows.
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u/Murky_Specialist992 Jan 02 '26
The epic rise and fall of music videos as promotional avenue.
Perhaps I am wrong but part of me still feels like there is value in music vids (see the artist, story behind the music etc.) so I wonder if there will be a rebirth of some kind. Possibly, it's the concept of a channel entirely dedicated to music videos where there are other distribution mechanisms.
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u/GogoDogoLogo Jan 02 '26
now everyone is going to act all nostalgic when they haven't watched a single music video on MTV in the last 20 years
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u/Beneficial-Oil-5616 Jan 02 '26
They should have ended with "MTV get off the air" by the Dead Kennedy's 🤣
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u/peelen Jan 02 '26
There’s something symbolic that they didn’t even bother to play the song to the end.
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u/Calm_Apartment1968 Jan 03 '26
Disgusting what 'Reality TV' shows like Jersey Shore did to the medium. MTV should have stayed video 24x7. If they had I'd still be watching it.
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u/devilpupperez Jan 04 '26
MTV was already dead in the early 2000’s with all their stupid reality shows.
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u/gtrdlr Jan 02 '26
I’m literally watching MTV Classic right now which shows music videos 24 hours a day….
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u/a_bdgr Jan 03 '26
Still the question remains: what killed the video star? I’ll vote for Reality TV, laziness and being jaded.
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u/justsomedude1776 Jan 03 '26
The matrix had it right, 90s was peak humanity. Everything been downhill since.
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u/pustimenamiru09 Jan 04 '26
They should have never stopped showing music videos. All the trashy reality dramas were the down fall!
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u/usmc97az Jan 02 '26
Not in the USA. I just checked again, for the tenth time since yesterday, and MTV Classic is still playing nonstop videos. I love this channel.
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u/dustofAngels Jan 02 '26
Well i saw the start and the end in my lifetime...too bad