MTV used to have some awesome original content back in the day. Beavis & Butt-Head, Daria, Liquid Television, Cartoon Sushi, the MTV Oddities block of The Head and The Maxx, etc. (I know I’m focusing on animation here, so I’ll throw in Remote Control and The State for good measure.) They had some awesome stuff that you just couldn’t get anywhere else. It wasn’t just music videos. It was adding something new to the culture.
The overhead for those types of shows probably don’t sit well with their viewership numbers anymore. A panel show with people just responding to free-to-access videos is a cheap show they can throw on at low risk, with few eyes needed to recoup costs. Obviously, though, more eyes would make this a healthy moneymaker. But this just an evolution of the lesson learned from The Real World. But with names that people actually know.
Every channel, no matter how narrow its niche, will become like every other channel.
Seriously, if the Chess Channel launched next week, in six months they’d have an “unscripted” reality show, and in a year, they’d be showing movies that mention chess. Eventually, they’d lose the chess theme altogether.
See: The Learning Channel (TLC), Cable Health Network / Lifetime Medical Television / Lifetime, American Movie Classics (AMC), and on and on.
Same can be applied to Twitch. Yesterday the top two channels were a chess match and a girl in a hot tub. Next year, the hot tub girl chess championship should be number one…
On an episode of Ridiculousness, Rob Dyrdek made a reference to Music Television, and Chanel West Coast asked, “what’s that?” He then had to explain to her that’s what MTV stands for…
I’m surprised it’s still around. I thought it would’ve been bought out and folded by now. I guess that’s why I like Youtube these days. Especially for fan made music videos. It’s just weird that cable TV execs don’t get why people like consistent content channels/streams. If I want to mix it up I can just switch to a different stream/web-channel these days. The idiocy of trying to be number one is evidence of the mediocre of entertainment under capitalism.
I have such fond memories of MTV2 in the UK in the late 90s/early 2000s, particularly the late night segments. I wish there was something like that around today.
We’re still complaining that MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore? Look, I get it, I’m of that age too, but it’s time to let it go. It’s been more than 30 years. This has gotten way into Old Man Yelling At Cloud territory.
MTV briefly (as a percentage of its existence) played music videos because they were free. Music companies didn’t charge royalties because they were seen as ads for the music. Once that free content went away, MTV moved on to other things.
YouTube is now a way better way to watch music videos than MTV ever was. Let. It. Go.
When kids start “Okay Boomering” you, this will be why. The world was not better when you were young. Let it go.
This is true so much. Like I’ve seen better music videos on YT for small acts that were quite interesting. Mind you, I like synthwave so most of it was nostalgia-laidened nonsense but it was better than what was cranked out in the 80s.
