MTV Music Channel Cuts & Rose Tinted Nostalgia

[Wayde Robson]

MTV's parent company Paramount-Skydance ended several of MTV's music channels on the night of New Year's Eve 2025. In reading about this I noticed a lot of older folks waxing nostalgic about the the network's good old days, the MTV of the 1980s when it was a music video channel. I think the nostalgia overestimates how much people watched music videos. I remember MTV and the tagline: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll". If what I saw was rock and roll, it was cold-filtered and watered down by a team of corporate executives.

Of course, some music videos did interesting things with the medium. But overall, my memory of MTV was that of a top-40 radio station. Songs I loved back then didn't need an accompanying visual narrative beyond seeing the band's performance. I can't believe I'm the only one who remembers it that way.

The Myth of MTV's Golden Age

 

[rjplummer]

Robson seems to have 2 hypotheses:

1 "did video really add anything to music? "
2 "On-demand streaming, social media sharing, and music discovery algorithms have made MTV’s dedicated music channels irrelevant."

I think #2 is probably correct. But by far the most popular music streaming service is YouTube. And TikTok has a huge music listening audience. So I think video is more important to music than it was during MTV's heyday

 

[lovinthehd]

LOL remember we had it in our roommate living setup from day 1. We often just left it running, and had the tv connected to the stereo too. Suited our attention spans at the time .

 

[m. zillch]

Their debut video predicted what would happen:

 

[zimtheinvader]

Suited our attention spans at the time .

People didn't know how good it was when attention spans were 5-15 minutes instead of 30 seconds.

 

[Wayde Robson]

People didn't know how good it was when attention spans were 5-15 minutes instead of 30 seconds.

That's what I was thinking, it felt like music videos were one step in the direction of mass audiences needing greater sensory stimulation. IMHO, it was one step down the road to Tik-Tok dance videos.

But I don't think all videos are "bad", it just turns music into another media. But for awhile in the 80s, I hated the idea that songs needed videos now. But hey, some bands did it well and weren't forced by the label to make them so, more power to 'em.

I loved Pink Floyd's The Wall, it was one big elaborate music video.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I loved Pink Floyd's The Wall, it was one big elaborate music video.

*cough* The music video was of the song "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2", which was later added to a full-length movie, "Pink Floyd The Wall" (1982)

 

[Big-Q]

My friends and I loved MTV. Only one buddy, had cable and we would watch for hours. I never had cable but when I was somewhere with cable, MTV was always tuned into. With that said, I am an album guy and only listen to full albums. Playlists, no thank you except on a road trip. Most of the music today is junk but every now and then, I find an act that is decent. Most recently that would be Goose.

 

[Bobby Bass]

Bringing back memories of all the artists saying, I want my MTv. The big 80s. Physical media was vinyl and cassettes and you could listen to the radio, FM or AM. And then came cable TV and music television both at about the same time in my college town. The TV was tuned to MTv in the apartment if anyone was home. End of an era. Now streaming, playing CDs and BluRays with atmos mixes. No changes are permanent but change is.

 

[Eppie]

My friends and I loved MTV. Only one buddy, had cable and we would watch for hours. I never had cable but when I was somewhere with cable, MTV was always tuned into. With that said, I am an album guy and only listen to full albums. Playlists, no thank you except on a road trip. Most of the music today is junk but every now and then, I find an act that is decent. Most recently that would be Goose.

Someone in the forums posted the video for Dripfield and I just love that song. I like Goose's studio tracks but when live they like to solo for forever.

Youtube is my usual source for new and different material. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have a lot of good music on Youtube and they have streamed a lot of concerts. Wolf Alice has been around for a while but they are still creating great music and make a lot of videos. Blue Weekend was an amazing project as they strung all of the videos together and have the entire album in video form.