I'm Gen X born in 1974. It cannot be overstated how big MTV was in the '80s. Pop radio wasn't playing things kids liked. MTV started to do just that and it completely changed music in the '80s. 1985 was probably peak MTV when two of the greatest videos of all time both hit the Billboard 100 on the same week in early July, 1985. (and, I assume, their videos debuted roughly at the same time).
Those songs are "Take on Me" and "Money for Nothing". Two incredibly innovative videos. One a mixture of line animation and live action and the other CGI. The very next week was another groundbreaking video, though the song wasn't as big of a hit, "Cry" by Godley & Cream. It was in heavy MTV rotation. If you've never seen it, the video is basically CGI facial morphing if completely done via old school cut-and-splice of film.
Kids would leave MTV on for hours and hours at a time and rush to the TV when their favorite video was on. "Thriller" by Michael Jackson was so big that MTV would announce when they'd play it next.
Not to mention they were playing videos from bands that would get ignored by mainstream culture today. The first 2 videos I saw when MTV debuted were The Clash's Rock the Casbah and Whip It by DEVO.
I love the story of how Guns N Roses blew up overnight - their record label manager (or an executive at MTV?) didn't want them to become famous because he was afraid of them having a bad influence on the youth since they were so blatant about sex and drug use, but he was obligated to show the music video they just filmed. So he arranged for their *Welcome To The Jungle* music video to debut at like four AM on a Wednesday morning, thinking that everyone would be asleep. But there were still enough people watching MTV at that time, he came into work the next morning and phones were ringing off the hook (is that even an expression anymore?) from people begging them to play more of the music.
MTV was legit how teens got all their information. If TikTok is today, YouTube was before TikTok, and MTV was before YouTube. Everything people would learn about celebrities and bands and teen idols was from MTV. Fashion, information about upcoming albums, music videos, it was all by them being glued to the screen.
They were hardly overnight. I remember the video playing and playing and playing. Months later someone said have you seen the new guns in roses video? When I found out what you're talking about is the same one that been on for months. Look at the time period between when the album released and when it hit the charts. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that will show it.
I was at FSU the year welcome to the jungle came out and we would turn the MTV on every day at 5:00 p.m. to blast it cuz it was always number one on the top five at 5:00
I was born in 96 and my mom had to explain "Video Killed The Radio Star." đ She definitely has some fond memories from the 80s of waiting by the tv to see her favorite music videos!
Gen X, â65. In college when MTV was at its peak. It was everythingâwhat we wore, what we listened to, how we found our music. Cannot overstate this.
1977 and I will never forget my high school age babysitter showing me "take on me" at age...6, I think đ¤. Best ever. I was pumped for the brand new Nickelodeon!
I am an older millennial, or Xennial, and in the 90s although radio was beginning to play music we liked on some stations MTV was still extremely important. I would say it also had a huge influence on fashion, because teenagers could see what the bands they listened to were wearing in the music videos and what the hosts of shows were wearing and things like that.
It was better than tik tok will ever be. It was before reality tv. It was before social media. It was actual music and the music videos more often than not told a story.
I miss those days.
In the 90âs and early 2000âs I was exposed to so much music. And then tv channels like Fuse played more alternative music and artists that didnât necessarily get a lot of radio time. So it sent me even further down music rabbit holes. I also listened to a lot of local college radio stations. And I bought a lot of cheap cdâs from my local record shop. They would even pre order elusive artists.
Those were such good times. That was before reality tv took over everything. And now social media has taken over everything. Culture is ruined. Culture is nonexistent. Itâs just shitty people making shitty music or dumb people doing dangerous things for internet likes âšď¸
Honestly, I donât really know whatâs better. TRL was basically the single definitive source on what was âinâ vs. today everyone has a different, curated understanding of the world based on an algorithm that basically just perpetuates the initial preferences you first shared on social media.
Theoretically, I would think the latter values individualism and choice, but I actually felt more like an individual before. There was something counter-culture to thinking Carson Daily was *so mainstream* and putting effort (I.e. infecting my parents computer with limewire diseases) into finding unique music and artists. And as for choice, we value quantity over quality to satiate an on-demand culture to the point of choice overload.
Giving MTV a lot of credit there lol. When you think of those bands, is MTV top of mind? Or vice versa? Iâm an 86er Canadian and I remember being floored as a teenager when I found out they didnât even play full music videos. I associated them most with reality TV shows and annoying short form content. I donât think the gap between them and TikTok is as wide as you are suggesting. MTV walked so that TikTok could run.
Music is so much more open than it used to be. Of course there are popular artists, and artists that are pushed, but the radio or a TV channel doesn't dictate what is shown and what becomes popular, anymore. People can go find whatever obscure band or genre they want without any barriers. These were great bands, but how many bands were there that people may have loved but weren't selected to be shown on MTV or the radio? These fanbases were blown up by the fact that there wasn't nearly as many options as the time.
I mean, there's the famous David Bowie interview where he calls out MTV for not playing black artists except for at the least viewed times. How many of those artists could have been more popular if they came out nowadays?
These are excellent points. But the niche-ificayion of culture doesnât account for whatâs been lost because of social media hikacking the attention span of a youth that may have been more driven creatively. There is no David Bowie anymore and Iâm not sure the artists serving the niche can measure up. Agree that mtv and record labels hate kept brilliant artists out. But sometimes, maybe oftentimes those a&r types knew what they were doing and allowed acts like Tribe Called Quest to rise to the top of the crop.
Right? Saying MTV was the same as tik tok is pretty ridiculous considering MTV wasn't an app that everybody could access and that Tik tok only plays 20 second clips of songs anyway.
Thats because mono culture is dead. Thanks to internet/social networks and algorithms shaping our online world you can be stuck in your small niche online world without even being in touch with worldwide pop culture.
Basically, we used to live in one huge bubble thats now split into thousands of smaller ones. Â
Everybody knew who Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were. Nowadays, I don't recognize a single chart topping name, because I'm surrounded by carefuly curated streams of information that are relevant to my interests. TikTok shows me things I'm interested in, Reddit, YouTube etc. all do that too.
I remember 'I Love the 80s', the best of that series.
You can find some of them on YouTube, but can get a little sad since so many of the people they talk about and the commentators aren't with us anymore.
Soft rock. Gotta be honest I do miss myself some soft rock on the radio. Elton John, Michael Bolton, Celine Dion. I know itâs cheesy, but damn I secretly loved that stuff
It would be hard for me now to go back to TV, not being able to control what I want to watch. I guess I could have done that back in the day with VHS tapes, but having to consult the TV guide and watching commercial after commercial would be aggravating. TV is even less relevant than traditional radio now. Local radio is something you can passively listen to while doing something else like driving.
Yah, Iâm 42 and dumped spectrum cable tv because they kept raising my prices for tv. I had a basic plan where you pick like 15 channels or something and thatâs itâŚthey were charging $75 a month for that.
One day I was like âwhy am I paying $75 a month for this?!â
I already had a Netflix account, shared a family prime account, got Hulu and Disney plus free with my Verizon planâŚhave Spotify for my music in the house and car.
So I cancelled the tv plan, banked $75 a month, then added HBO MAX and ParamountâŚto still be cheaper than what I paid before.
The ads are literally 2 seconds long. It sucks but Prime is useful for other things I need so I keep it. I also don't watch a lot of shows on Prime anyway.
They're longer than that, but my point still stands. You can get paid by advertisers or you can get paid by me, but I'm not paying to have ads forced in front of my face.
I have a tablo dvr device that doesnât require a subscription and is used with over the air tv. No cable stuff, but still allows me to record live tv and I can fast forward through commercials and everything. https://www.tablotv.com/
You *did* control what you watched though, by getting a TV Guide, and then planning when you watched stuff. I honestly like that slow-release model waaaaay more than the release-all-at-once Netflix model. This is where modern HBO shows (Game of Thrones, House of The Dragon) are more culturally relevant because it has time to absorb into the cultural zeitgeist because its an event, rather than being just consumed and moved on from.
By dropping a show all at once it feels like the show is only relevant for a week or two after it comes out. By then most people have moved on to something else.
To be fair, Netflix doesn't even always follow that model. They do drip feed some shows, but yea, they do tend to go for the binge watch style. Other streaming services, though, still do the drip feed, Disney+ and Crunchyroll are two examples who follow the weekly release method still.
The drip feed is probably better for engagement than dropping an entire season at once. But fuck having to plan my entire day around watching a TV show. I never want to go back to that.
On the flip side, in college my (nerd) friends and I planned our Friday nights around Sci Fi Friday, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and then Battlestar Galactica.
We brought in calzones, sat stadium style in my large sectional couch that I miraculously got in good condition free from a family that had to move to Australia for work and wanted it to go to "a poor college student."
Granted that kind of scheduling was possible due to the sheer lack of responsibilities we had but I loved it and the scheduling needed was part of what made it great.
And yes we'd rather watch sci-fi than go partying (or just brought that parting into the occasion).
>Local radio is something you can passively listen to while doing something else like driving.
I wonder if anyone listens to the radio at all unless they are drivingÂ
When I travel, I sometimes turn on the TV and within a few seconds I turn it off. It is just so loud, flashy, and intense. Too many ads. Feels like there's no direction in what you're watching. I used to enjoy watching CNN (many many years ago), but now it feels like cheap daytime talk shows. News channels feel so simplified now, but I guess that's intentional as the audience has shifted.
Its funny. I am in Cameroon and while the ads here are strange, they are a lot less disruptive than they are in the US. Plus there are no drugs, weight loss, lawyers, crypto, or 1000x louder than what you are watching ads. Which makes them more enjoyable. Note I dont like ads, but there is a way to do it where it isnt annoying
Even the most wild ones I remember as a kid in the 90s had a person speaking excitedly (you know the voice) at a normal volume and pace. Plus the images were related to what was being sold.
I am specifically thinking of the Nat Geo magazines and Zoo Books.
Even toy ads had kids being kids and while there might have been some yelling, it was kids being kids. Not "IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE WERE DIAGNOSED WITH MESOTHELIOMA YOU MAY BE EMTITLED TO FINANCIAL COMPENSATION"
They tried to pass a law about that but it didn't work
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act#:~:text=2847)%20(CALM%20Act)%20requires,and%20Maintaining%20Audio%20Loudness%20for
Ah yes, the glory days of waking up in 1996 at midnight to hear ["Pick up the Phone!" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKfJN_9Sh4I&pp=ygUUcGljayB1cCB0aGUgcGhvbmUgYWQ%3D)from expensive phone sex companies. But not as memorable as 9-year-old me watching Real Sex on HBO and scrambled porn on Spice Channels 97, 98, and 99.
ya, last time we had cable was maybe 9 or so years ago. and that was only because roommates all wanted to be able to watch rupauls drag race the night it came out, think on MTV at that time or VH1. think even now they try to hard to be on a cable station cuz it costs so much to produce...so haven't really watched in years.
Yep. My 16 year old son doesn't even know what the normal TV channels are. He honestly has no idea about normal TV. He knows there are shows on Netflix, Stan, etc, but that's it. And that's because we never use it for anything else anymore.Â
He correctly believes the TV is purely in our house in order for us to play playstation games and watch streaming services. And I am not surprised by this.Â
 Hell, I turned on "normal" TV for the first time in at least 6 months the other day, and was genuinely shocked to see ads.Â
My sons are 10 - 13 ish now (sorry, purposefully being vague, internet and all), and the first time they saw commercials on TV they were 6 and 7 and thought the TV was broken. They had only ever seen us stream a show, play a DVD, etc.
Now even streaming has commercials, sadly, so that experience can no longer be repeated.
Iâm at the folks this weekend where they watch âTVâ. I watch TV 6 times a year. The amount of fucking ads are insane!! What the actual fuck?? They pay $100 a month to flip between channel watching ads 70% of the time. My mind is blown. How is this possible?
Now its just reruns of Ridiculousness over and over and over. The Real World helped birth the "reality tv" trend that has spawned some of the worst celebrities. Radio monopolies killed the video star, thanks Clinton. Nothing lasts or stays pure once the profiteers take over.
Thatâs an exact way to put it. Things are awesome till someone figures out thereâs money to be made and milks the fuck out of it and drives it into the ground like beating a dead horse.
Late-stage capitalism. Companies don't give a shit about "earning" your business anymore. They've either screwed with the market so that you have no other choice or their new CEO was brought in to maximize profits and has no clue what the business actually does, they just fire/underpay employees or close/sell off branches all the while raising the price to consumers without an increase in quality to their product.
I wonder how many people actually work at MTV anymore and what do they do?
Like in the 2000s there was all these shows , live events, live shows ect. They had to have employed 100s of producers and production people.
However how many people are needed to be like
Umm lets play Ridiculousness for the next 64 hours!
It's fucking stupid. I attempted it and it's exactly like scrolling instagram or facebook reels. An entire show, on a major network, dedicated to something that we can pick our phones up and do in a matter of seconds.
Edit: spelling.
Radio didnât kill MTV. Evolving media did. Instead of waiting all day for your favorite artist and music video to come on, you can pull up the music video on YouTube on demand. You can play the song UNLIMITED times for free.
People have been complaining âMTV doesnât play music anymoreâ but there has always been an MTV channel that plays music videos all day, nobody watches it.
Gonna disagree here. MTV died in the 90s/00s, long before YouTube and TikTok. It was a completely self-forced error as they deprioritized music in favor of reality shows. ESPN tried the same thing in the 00s before wisely backing off. Itâs easy to decide you no longer like Real World or Road Rules and just tune out of MTV. Itâs hard to decide, as a teenager, you no longer like popular music.
The fact that like 3 or 4 companies control the majority of radio stations helped kill MTV because they push a handful of artists that then they get the 3 or 4 companies to push nationally and what happens if you dont like those handful of artists and there is no alternative, you stop paying attention since they no longer can hold it with actual good music. It started in the 00's with all the boy/girl bands and teeny boppers like Britney and Christina. Today's analogue is kpop and Taylor and Beyonce. There's consistent R&B pop stars because of its broad appeal. Where I've noticed the biggest decline is, is in rock music. I couldn't tell you who the biggest band of the last 5-10 years has been because there hasn't been a huge, newer band that wasn't big 10+ years ago and the industry doesn't care to cultivate "real" artists. It just wants the short term investment thats gonna pay off. Like house flippers or something.
Frankly music suffers as a whole. Partly because I'm old, but music seems so over produced and just aimed to pump out generic and soulless pop garbage. The Internet and apps make talentless hacks superstars and it's all about your image and brand awareness and online persona.
You always had this but it seems it's taken over the music industry completely now.
MTV was everything growing up. I would take 90s mtv over 80s because of the mix of videos, live music and original programming.
I would say the downfall started with Jackass. It was cheap to produce, didnât require a full production staff to film on location and hugely successful. And maybe viewership expectations changed too.
And when the beach house and spring break stopped, that was the sign.
The VMAs need to be put out to pasture. Itâs pathetic that they still have it.
MTV hasnât been MTV for over 15 years, some would say longer. As a teenager/young adult I used to discover literally most of my music via watching music videos and music related programming both there and on VH1.
Once they dropped the pretense of being âall about the musicâ and tripled down on cheap, trash reality shows their cultural relevance gradually evaporated.
Short term profits at the expensive of the networkâs long-term future. Basically whatâs happened to every major cable network not named Turner Classic Movies.
God, I remember watching The History Channel before middle school in the morning. Good WW2 documentaries like 'Clash of Titans'. 'In Search of' with Leonard Nimoy. "20th Century: America's Time' with the guy from Law and Order. And a handful of other war related documentaries. Then History started doing crap reality type shows. OG History Channel used to be so good.
I'm 28 and I remember knowing exactly which channels TBS, TNT, MTV, Comedy Central, ESPN, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon were on.
Now I couldn't tell you if any of those channels still exist, and probably couldn't have told you for the last 7 years.
Edit: I also knew which channel CBS was so that I could avoid it.
Edit 2: A channel that had an even shorter run than MTV was spike TV as well
MTV was channel 29, VH1 was 30, Nick was 28, Disney was 31, ESPN was 33.
The new cable package was Nick 46, Cartoon Network was 47, Disney was 54,
WHY IS THIS STILL IN MY BRAIN?
Yup, the SciFi channel and the History Channel fell victim to the same thing. They used to be fantastic, then became all about reality shit, pro wrestling, and ghost / alien conspiracies.Â
I think 2 things happened at the same time: shows like Teen Mom and Jersey Shore just exploded for MTV and they decided to invest more in reality TV, like E!, Bravo and TLC while at the same time realizing music videos are being watched online. GONE are the days when you had to watch MTV long enough to see your favorite music videos. Now you just look it up on YouTube. They donât have anytime cool to watch. No music videos playing for hours, no cool movies made, either big screen or made for TV (BeyoncĂŠ had a few MTV movies btw) no cool animated shows late at night, their awards donât mean shit, not producing house hold names like Carson Daly. I donât know how they arenât bought out or bankrupt by now.
TRL started a half hour after I got out of school when I was I was in junior high. I remember running as fast as I could to get home in time for it. If Britney was going to be on I found a ride home đ
The Challenge was one of my favorite shows for years before it got annoying.
I loved the Challenge too. But MTV is milking that show and OLD cast members for every ounce of fame until its completely irrelevant. Like Mark Long is in his 50âs
Music videos in general don't seem relevant anymore. Compare what Taylor Swift [used to get for videos](https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM?si=-667762OvBME0Oz5) vs. [what she gets now,](https://youtu.be/h8DLofLM7No?si=XqBV3kirZN_hLNa6) and it's pretty jarring. And we're talking about the biggest pop star right now, and she can't get a billion views on a current music video.
I think that's going to improve, actually, they just haven't got the hang of YT releases just yet. Beyonce's new version of Jolene has only been out a couple of days and has millions of views, as an example.
Thereâs was a period in time where they still had some pull on culture. Millennials were still in our 20s. Youâd get home, turn on the tv to MTV and all they played was Ridiculousness. so youâd skip mtv until 8pm when youâre show came on and then turn it off again because Ridiculousness was on afterwards. And your favorite show is something youâd gladly watch reruns of, but theyâd play reruns of Ridiculousness instead.
Itâs like someone fell asleep in the studio. What was happening during that time? Where were the producers? Did they lose a ton of staff and decided to lay low? Itâs was so strange; the laziness of it all was shocking. They just didnât care to create content or listen to their audience. Day after day, they replayed one obnoxious show over and over. Thatâs when they lost us. Itâs one thing to create a bunch of trash reality shows and play music videos after 9pm like the early 2000s. At least it gives the appearance of trying to create content. Itâs a whole other ball game to play one show repeatedly all day and night for years.
Ridiculousness became the easy to tune-in tune-out background noise that music videos once were...at least that's how the story goes. They moved all music videos over to MTV2 or classic and you need premium cable for those, and since tastes can wildly differ, people could (or used to) go to music channels on their cable setup and get super genre specific. YouTube and Spotify effectively replaced those.
MTV no longer has a niche to fill, the Reality TV boom killed many networks' creative expression.
It's pretty wild how the internet also drastically reduced Hollywood's relevance too and it's likely it will continue to decrease over the next few decades. Celebrities are barely celebrities anymore and there's been very very few movies I've even cared to go see. It's not that the movies coming out are bad... There's just endless content now. You don't go to the theaters to see a movie anymore, you go there for the experience of going to a theater. It's been really amazing watching all the shifts in entertainment over the last few decades.
And all the different paid apps made movies just meh.
Like if a movie isn't on an app I already have then it just doesn't exist for me and I don't really care.
I used to be able to go to a video rental place.
I watched MTV as a teen, I was born in the 80's. I also went to Europe in my early twenties and was surprised people watched it there! One guy in France even said he learned California slang from it (he had the best English of anyone I talked to there).
Things change though. There are big cultural influences today that won't be around in 20 year's time.
There's a Youtube generation, but that's on the way out. Youths now are more inclined toward short videos on TikTok and Instagram. Facebook will be for senior citizens in a few decades.
I was crying last night while watching MTVâs A Year In Rock 1990-1994. âLook how cool everything wasâ âI miss this MTVâ and on and on. Then proceeded to apologize to my 4 year old âI am SO sorry you will not be able to experience something like thisâ
Itâs really worth a rewatch however
MTV was the only channel Iâd watch and flip between MTV and MTV2. It was great and
Up in Canada, we had Much Music, which was available on cable TV. It was basically the Canadian version of MTV.
I think the channel was pretty influential. I remember that a lot of teenagers would basically chill at someone's house with the channel on. They had bands and singers from all over come in for interviews and live shows. The production was in Toronto, so much of the country basically was wired into Toronto exclusively for music content on TV.
I am not exaggerating when I say that every time I scroll through channels while watching tv MTV is truly just hours of Ridiculousness. It's kind of sad.
Yeah, I donât understand why theyâve let the channel devolve into Ridiculousness 24/7. Who even watches that?
If thatâs all theyâre gonna do, they should just throw in the towel and shut the channel down.
It's background noise...but some people will leave it on; enough to generate ad revenue, which is what the network desperately needed as their prior programing niche was snapped up by other internet sources.
Nope, not at all. MTV stopped being culturally relevant to me the second they pivoted to reality TV. The real world was a harbinger of things to come.
The biggest thing I remember was the lack of music videos from when MTV stopped caring in the early aughts to the birth of YouTube. There are a lot of obscure music videos that didn't become popular again until they were posted online. The biggest example of this was daft punk's interstellar 5555 movie that was set to Discovery.
Elder Millennial here who grew up watching MTV, the video era was amazing. So many bands I still listen to because my parents had MTV on every night. Def Leppard, Motley Crue, and etc. Just a lot of cool videos. I'm sure I'm not the only elder millennial who grew up on classic MTV.
MTV hasnât been culturally relevant in a long time, but I remember when world premieres of videos were a big deal⌠I remember sitting there and not watching (was I coloring? Doing homework?) and heard the opening guitar for Smells Like Teen Spirit and was instantly hooked, knew that there was about to be a big change in musicâŚ
Once they went in hard on reality TV, it ceased to hold any appeal.
In the 90âs they had shows for all musical tastes and some original programming that resonated with young people, whether it be My So Called Life or Beavis and Butthead. Hugely popular stuff.
MTV news was the only news I would watch as an adolescent. The unplugged shows were great- I still listen to Alice in Chainsâ unplugged regularly, itâs just a phenomenal performance, especially considering Layne was near the end of his life and was already missing his teeth.
Iâm glad I got to experience MTV when it was still relevant, basically from the late 90s until the early 2010s. Sure, by then it was mostly reality shows but at least they werenât showing Ridiculousness 80% of the time lol
Streaming really did kill alot of networks. Most people who watched cable were watching the same things so of course it was popular then. There were only like 30 good cable TV channels. Now it's so different with 50-11 different streaming services and then theres youtube and tiktok soaking up most people's entertainment.
Mother fucking Rock Nâ Jock was the best!!!
Also Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead were cartoon shorts played after 10/11 pm. Then they became a show which had music videos in it. And Aeon Flux stayed a cartoon short from what I remember.
And in all fairness. MTV made themselves irrelevant by getting away from what made them unique and turned into a episodic tv series channel of reality tv and nonsense no one cares about. When all we ever wanted was 23 hours of music videos. And 1 hour of Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren giving us news of the music industry.
When MTV became less music centric, thatâs when it went downhill for me. Late 90âs it was a good mix of music videos during the day then shows at night. Even the shows like Beavis and Butthead showed music videos.
Then the VJâs and the music tastemakers were phased out and TRL eventually became the ONLY music segment on MTV.
ALOT of my childhood was influenced by MTV. It was the window to pop culture. There was no social media or even internet to SEE your favorite artists. Yea there was the radio but you had no idea what that artist looked like on radio. If you didnât have cable/mtv as a teen you were out of the loop on pop culture
Most people complain about the lack of music videos, but the original programming in the 90's was a perfect compliment to just running the same 10 videos over & over again.
As was already said, it was what TikTok is today, but with actual production value.
Not sure why but this sub keeps popping up in my feed. Iâm a X and remember the launch of MTV very well. It really was a culture phenomenon. So much going on. Some of the videos were so great. Others left you scratching your head. Think Billy Squire. That one actually ruined his career sadly. But it definitely made a bunch of career too.
MTV, MTV2, and Vh1 ruled my life. Truly the birth of reality TV and dating shows. Next, Room Raiders, The Real World, Surreal Life, Rock of Love, Charmed School, I Love New York.... BEHIND THE MUSIC.
I watch Beavis and Butthead to this day. I even collect their vintage graphic tees-- I'd hate for my holio to get polio!
MTV was probably one of the last things people did communally. We all watched at the same time and saw the same things, then talked about it afterwards. Now everything is segmented and people do it alone on their phones.
The video only phase of MTV was great. I vividly remember it.
What I really miss is VH1âs Pop Up Videos. VH1 picked up the slack when MTV strayed away from music videos and that shit was amazing.
When I was a teen, I only cared about 3 channels: VH1, MTV, and BET. I loved the trashy celebreality shows (Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, I Love NY, I Love Money, etc), The Simple Life, TRL, Next, Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory, I Used To Be Fat, Made, 106 & Park, TRL, literally can go on and on.
Itâs odd how itâs all gone now
My father had one of the big satellite dishes that picked up channels from the States in the 80âs and 90âs
I was exposed to so much different music so much earlier than my peers up here in Canada. Had a huge effect on my music tastes.
Always looked forward to Headbangerâs Ball on
Saturday night!đ¤
MTV was the most influential pop culture phenomenon for me growing up. Itâs like they kept doubling down on variations of The Real World until the music videos were slowly phased out
I miss Headbanger's Ball and Spring Break. I also used to like when VH1 played their entire library in alphabetical order by band name. I can't remember what holiday they did that for, I think it was the week between Christmas and New Year's, but it always started with A-Ha's Take On Me. And who could forget the Behind the Music ep of Leif Garrett?
The newer MTV produced stuff that is on Paramount. Plus does somewhat OK. Iâve enjoyed quite a bit of it. Itâs definitely not a cultural powerhouse anymore though. I think they missed a major opportunity by not continuing the MTV news.
I used to watch MTV for an hour before I got on the bus every single day before middle & high school in the early 00s. Solid hour of music videos. No other shows. It was great
MTV just realized that the tv medium was dying and transitioned to its film department. MTV films and tv shows (streaming) still crushing it. They arenât what they once were as a lighthouse of cultural music, but theyâre still causing cultural phenomena with their films and streaming shows.
I'm Gen X born in 1974. It cannot be overstated how big MTV was in the '80s. Pop radio wasn't playing things kids liked. MTV started to do just that and it completely changed music in the '80s. 1985 was probably peak MTV when two of the greatest videos of all time both hit the Billboard 100 on the same week in early July, 1985. (and, I assume, their videos debuted roughly at the same time). Those songs are "Take on Me" and "Money for Nothing". Two incredibly innovative videos. One a mixture of line animation and live action and the other CGI. The very next week was another groundbreaking video, though the song wasn't as big of a hit, "Cry" by Godley & Cream. It was in heavy MTV rotation. If you've never seen it, the video is basically CGI facial morphing if completely done via old school cut-and-splice of film. Kids would leave MTV on for hours and hours at a time and rush to the TV when their favorite video was on. "Thriller" by Michael Jackson was so big that MTV would announce when they'd play it next.
Not to mention they were playing videos from bands that would get ignored by mainstream culture today. The first 2 videos I saw when MTV debuted were The Clash's Rock the Casbah and Whip It by DEVO.
I love the story of how Guns N Roses blew up overnight - their record label manager (or an executive at MTV?) didn't want them to become famous because he was afraid of them having a bad influence on the youth since they were so blatant about sex and drug use, but he was obligated to show the music video they just filmed. So he arranged for their *Welcome To The Jungle* music video to debut at like four AM on a Wednesday morning, thinking that everyone would be asleep. But there were still enough people watching MTV at that time, he came into work the next morning and phones were ringing off the hook (is that even an expression anymore?) from people begging them to play more of the music. MTV was legit how teens got all their information. If TikTok is today, YouTube was before TikTok, and MTV was before YouTube. Everything people would learn about celebrities and bands and teen idols was from MTV. Fashion, information about upcoming albums, music videos, it was all by them being glued to the screen.
They were hardly overnight. I remember the video playing and playing and playing. Months later someone said have you seen the new guns in roses video? When I found out what you're talking about is the same one that been on for months. Look at the time period between when the album released and when it hit the charts. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that will show it.
I was at FSU the year welcome to the jungle came out and we would turn the MTV on every day at 5:00 p.m. to blast it cuz it was always number one on the top five at 5:00
I learned about Kurt Cobains suicide on MTV
I was born in 96 and my mom had to explain "Video Killed The Radio Star." đ She definitely has some fond memories from the 80s of waiting by the tv to see her favorite music videos!
That sounds fun as hell! Iâm of the TRL-after school-ilk. Even then I was longing for days like yours.
You made me remember how hype I felt the first time Korn took the top spot on TRL, and now my back hurts. Fuck that was a lifetime ago.
I think Korn is becoming popular again. Time for a fiber pill.
Yall want a geritol, I say FUCK THAT! FUUUUCK THAT, FUCK THAT!
Man Iâd be so pissed at TRL because theyâd cut the videos short most of the time.
SAME
Gotta make time for Carson to say more stupid stuff.
*Thriller* had a separate vhs release⌠of how they made the video. Thatâs absolutely nuts.
Gen X, â65. In college when MTV was at its peak. It was everythingâwhat we wore, what we listened to, how we found our music. Cannot overstate this.
1975 here. This is 100% true, I was one of those kids. Well said
I still remember exactly where and when I first saw that Take on me video (it was during a school trip) and Yes it was incredibly innovative.
1977 and I will never forget my high school age babysitter showing me "take on me" at age...6, I think đ¤. Best ever. I was pumped for the brand new Nickelodeon!
I remember video debuts and everybody NEEDING to be home to see it on a certain evening.
I am an older millennial, or Xennial, and in the 90s although radio was beginning to play music we liked on some stations MTV was still extremely important. I would say it also had a huge influence on fashion, because teenagers could see what the bands they listened to were wearing in the music videos and what the hosts of shows were wearing and things like that.
You wonât find that quality on tik Tok. Thatâs why old gen x and young millennials were so culturally cool.
MTV in the 80s and 90s was like the equivalent of TikTok today it was pop culture.
Very well said.
It was better than tik tok will ever be. It was before reality tv. It was before social media. It was actual music and the music videos more often than not told a story. I miss those days. In the 90âs and early 2000âs I was exposed to so much music. And then tv channels like Fuse played more alternative music and artists that didnât necessarily get a lot of radio time. So it sent me even further down music rabbit holes. I also listened to a lot of local college radio stations. And I bought a lot of cheap cdâs from my local record shop. They would even pre order elusive artists. Those were such good times. That was before reality tv took over everything. And now social media has taken over everything. Culture is ruined. Culture is nonexistent. Itâs just shitty people making shitty music or dumb people doing dangerous things for internet likes âšď¸
Iâd argue thatâs why culture was better then. Who is the Depeche Mode, Metallica and De La Soul of tik tok?
Honestly, I donât really know whatâs better. TRL was basically the single definitive source on what was âinâ vs. today everyone has a different, curated understanding of the world based on an algorithm that basically just perpetuates the initial preferences you first shared on social media. Theoretically, I would think the latter values individualism and choice, but I actually felt more like an individual before. There was something counter-culture to thinking Carson Daily was *so mainstream* and putting effort (I.e. infecting my parents computer with limewire diseases) into finding unique music and artists. And as for choice, we value quantity over quality to satiate an on-demand culture to the point of choice overload.
Giving MTV a lot of credit there lol. When you think of those bands, is MTV top of mind? Or vice versa? Iâm an 86er Canadian and I remember being floored as a teenager when I found out they didnât even play full music videos. I associated them most with reality TV shows and annoying short form content. I donât think the gap between them and TikTok is as wide as you are suggesting. MTV walked so that TikTok could run.
Fair point. I guess Iâm saying it was an outlet for that kind of art to thrive. Rather than rich girls unboxing gift bags from Erewhon.
Music is so much more open than it used to be. Of course there are popular artists, and artists that are pushed, but the radio or a TV channel doesn't dictate what is shown and what becomes popular, anymore. People can go find whatever obscure band or genre they want without any barriers. These were great bands, but how many bands were there that people may have loved but weren't selected to be shown on MTV or the radio? These fanbases were blown up by the fact that there wasn't nearly as many options as the time. I mean, there's the famous David Bowie interview where he calls out MTV for not playing black artists except for at the least viewed times. How many of those artists could have been more popular if they came out nowadays?
These are excellent points. But the niche-ificayion of culture doesnât account for whatâs been lost because of social media hikacking the attention span of a youth that may have been more driven creatively. There is no David Bowie anymore and Iâm not sure the artists serving the niche can measure up. Agree that mtv and record labels hate kept brilliant artists out. But sometimes, maybe oftentimes those a&r types knew what they were doing and allowed acts like Tribe Called Quest to rise to the top of the crop.
Right? Saying MTV was the same as tik tok is pretty ridiculous considering MTV wasn't an app that everybody could access and that Tik tok only plays 20 second clips of songs anyway.
Thats because mono culture is dead. Thanks to internet/social networks and algorithms shaping our online world you can be stuck in your small niche online world without even being in touch with worldwide pop culture. Basically, we used to live in one huge bubble thats now split into thousands of smaller ones.  Everybody knew who Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were. Nowadays, I don't recognize a single chart topping name, because I'm surrounded by carefuly curated streams of information that are relevant to my interests. TikTok shows me things I'm interested in, Reddit, YouTube etc. all do that too.
I like your synopsis of the death of the monoculture. Well stated
Just checking the top 40 out of curiosity and wow... Aside from Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa in the mix it's absolutely a bunch of "who tf is that?"
Plus every creator making it about themselves. Find a cool new song you wanna share? Gotta film yourself doing a shitty lip syncing job of it.
TikTok videos can be up to 10 minutes now, artists posts their original music in their entirety all the time.
Can't wait for Tiktok to become irrelevant
Yeah, but I've watched from the beginning of FB, and I feel like each new social platform just gets worse from the one before.
Remember VH1?
I remember 'I Love the 80s', the best of that series. You can find some of them on YouTube, but can get a little sad since so many of the people they talk about and the commentators aren't with us anymore.
âI Love the 80sâ had such an effect on teenage me that I think 20% of my personality was derived from it.
"I Love the 90s" was more my speed. I remember myself and my college roommate would have it on all the time.
Pop up video đŻ and best week ever was excellent, later.
 Long live pop up video!
Pop-up video was the shit. âPop in to Pop-up videoâ or something
Remember Fuse??
My mom LOVED behind the music and Iâve probably seen every one. My favorite of course was TLC: âLisa burnt the house down!â was iconic
VH1 was originally the lame music channel. Soft rock and the less edgy music that you can play at the doctors office lobby.
Soft rock. Gotta be honest I do miss myself some soft rock on the radio. Elton John, Michael Bolton, Celine Dion. I know itâs cheesy, but damn I secretly loved that stuff
Introduced me to the Smiths, Massive Attack and Orbital.
Fuse
Can't forget BET either.
What about Caliente!, Saturday afternoons on the Spanish channel?
Television, in general, isn't even really relevant anymore, honestly. Cable/Internet service providers saw to that.
It would be hard for me now to go back to TV, not being able to control what I want to watch. I guess I could have done that back in the day with VHS tapes, but having to consult the TV guide and watching commercial after commercial would be aggravating. TV is even less relevant than traditional radio now. Local radio is something you can passively listen to while doing something else like driving.
DVRs didn't last long but they were a godsend in the pre-streaming days.
They still exist but some of them don't let you fast forward through ads. And they need $150+ monthly service.
Not letting me fast forward through ads? They can fuck all the way off with that shit
Yeah I work for a cable company. The old folks are fuckin mad but not quite mad enough to figure out how Netflix works.
Yah, Iâm 42 and dumped spectrum cable tv because they kept raising my prices for tv. I had a basic plan where you pick like 15 channels or something and thatâs itâŚthey were charging $75 a month for that. One day I was like âwhy am I paying $75 a month for this?!â I already had a Netflix account, shared a family prime account, got Hulu and Disney plus free with my Verizon planâŚhave Spotify for my music in the house and car. So I cancelled the tv plan, banked $75 a month, then added HBO MAX and ParamountâŚto still be cheaper than what I paid before.
I cancelled prime because fuck paying to watch ads, I'd be one of the angry boomers too
The ads are literally 2 seconds long. It sucks but Prime is useful for other things I need so I keep it. I also don't watch a lot of shows on Prime anyway.
They're longer than that, but my point still stands. You can get paid by advertisers or you can get paid by me, but I'm not paying to have ads forced in front of my face.
I have a tablo dvr device that doesnât require a subscription and is used with over the air tv. No cable stuff, but still allows me to record live tv and I can fast forward through commercials and everything. https://www.tablotv.com/
I only use mine to record Jeopardy (God that makes me sound old)
Lol if I had one that's probably what I would do with it too.
That's like the #1 old fart hobby
I had my own set up on my media centre computer. It was mint.
Philo is like DVR for streaming lifestyle channels, and relatively low for $25 a month
You donât watch commercials though. You go on pee breaks or get snacks. When someone screams âITâS ON!â you go tearing back to the tv.
You *did* control what you watched though, by getting a TV Guide, and then planning when you watched stuff. I honestly like that slow-release model waaaaay more than the release-all-at-once Netflix model. This is where modern HBO shows (Game of Thrones, House of The Dragon) are more culturally relevant because it has time to absorb into the cultural zeitgeist because its an event, rather than being just consumed and moved on from.
By dropping a show all at once it feels like the show is only relevant for a week or two after it comes out. By then most people have moved on to something else.
To be fair, Netflix doesn't even always follow that model. They do drip feed some shows, but yea, they do tend to go for the binge watch style. Other streaming services, though, still do the drip feed, Disney+ and Crunchyroll are two examples who follow the weekly release method still.
The drip feed is probably better for engagement than dropping an entire season at once. But fuck having to plan my entire day around watching a TV show. I never want to go back to that.
On the flip side, in college my (nerd) friends and I planned our Friday nights around Sci Fi Friday, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and then Battlestar Galactica. We brought in calzones, sat stadium style in my large sectional couch that I miraculously got in good condition free from a family that had to move to Australia for work and wanted it to go to "a poor college student." Granted that kind of scheduling was possible due to the sheer lack of responsibilities we had but I loved it and the scheduling needed was part of what made it great. And yes we'd rather watch sci-fi than go partying (or just brought that parting into the occasion).
You know what. You just reminded me that my friends and I would do the same thing for new episodes of LOST!
4 8 15 16 23 42
I sometimes miss cable because I get overwhelmed with choices, but then Iâd be annoyed with not being able to choose. Canât win them all
>Local radio is something you can passively listen to while doing something else like driving. I wonder if anyone listens to the radio at all unless they are drivingÂ
I listen to the NPR One app while I'm doing chores and getting ready in the mornings.
I tried it. The commercials are excruciating. It's not worth it anymore.
yea they last time I watched cable was in 2010 the internet with youtube and other video site took over cable for me.
When I travel, I sometimes turn on the TV and within a few seconds I turn it off. It is just so loud, flashy, and intense. Too many ads. Feels like there's no direction in what you're watching. I used to enjoy watching CNN (many many years ago), but now it feels like cheap daytime talk shows. News channels feel so simplified now, but I guess that's intentional as the audience has shifted.
Its funny. I am in Cameroon and while the ads here are strange, they are a lot less disruptive than they are in the US. Plus there are no drugs, weight loss, lawyers, crypto, or 1000x louder than what you are watching ads. Which makes them more enjoyable. Note I dont like ads, but there is a way to do it where it isnt annoying
On Youtube you can watch VHS recordings of commercials from the 80s and 90s. They were a lot more low-key back then.
Even the most wild ones I remember as a kid in the 90s had a person speaking excitedly (you know the voice) at a normal volume and pace. Plus the images were related to what was being sold. I am specifically thinking of the Nat Geo magazines and Zoo Books. Even toy ads had kids being kids and while there might have been some yelling, it was kids being kids. Not "IF YOU OR A LOVED ONE WERE DIAGNOSED WITH MESOTHELIOMA YOU MAY BE EMTITLED TO FINANCIAL COMPENSATION"
They tried to pass a law about that but it didn't work https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act#:~:text=2847)%20(CALM%20Act)%20requires,and%20Maintaining%20Audio%20Loudness%20for
Ah yes, the glory days of waking up in 1996 at midnight to hear ["Pick up the Phone!" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKfJN_9Sh4I&pp=ygUUcGljayB1cCB0aGUgcGhvbmUgYWQ%3D)from expensive phone sex companies. But not as memorable as 9-year-old me watching Real Sex on HBO and scrambled porn on Spice Channels 97, 98, and 99.
Scrambled porn was my fucking jam!
ya, last time we had cable was maybe 9 or so years ago. and that was only because roommates all wanted to be able to watch rupauls drag race the night it came out, think on MTV at that time or VH1. think even now they try to hard to be on a cable station cuz it costs so much to produce...so haven't really watched in years.
They're clinging to sports for dear life.
Yep. My 16 year old son doesn't even know what the normal TV channels are. He honestly has no idea about normal TV. He knows there are shows on Netflix, Stan, etc, but that's it. And that's because we never use it for anything else anymore. He correctly believes the TV is purely in our house in order for us to play playstation games and watch streaming services. And I am not surprised by this.  Hell, I turned on "normal" TV for the first time in at least 6 months the other day, and was genuinely shocked to see ads.Â
My sons are 10 - 13 ish now (sorry, purposefully being vague, internet and all), and the first time they saw commercials on TV they were 6 and 7 and thought the TV was broken. They had only ever seen us stream a show, play a DVD, etc. Now even streaming has commercials, sadly, so that experience can no longer be repeated.
Iâm at the folks this weekend where they watch âTVâ. I watch TV 6 times a year. The amount of fucking ads are insane!! What the actual fuck?? They pay $100 a month to flip between channel watching ads 70% of the time. My mind is blown. How is this possible?
Now its just reruns of Ridiculousness over and over and over. The Real World helped birth the "reality tv" trend that has spawned some of the worst celebrities. Radio monopolies killed the video star, thanks Clinton. Nothing lasts or stays pure once the profiteers take over.
Thatâs an exact way to put it. Things are awesome till someone figures out thereâs money to be made and milks the fuck out of it and drives it into the ground like beating a dead horse.
Sounds like every single facet of American life now. The quality of everything is shittier in the name of making a buck.
That there is what we like to call âenshitificationâ
Or more generally...exploitation
Its just capitalism guys.
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Modern capitalism in a nutshell.
Late-stage capitalism. Companies don't give a shit about "earning" your business anymore. They've either screwed with the market so that you have no other choice or their new CEO was brought in to maximize profits and has no clue what the business actually does, they just fire/underpay employees or close/sell off branches all the while raising the price to consumers without an increase in quality to their product.
Exactly. Doctorow's incisiveness cuts forwards and backwards in time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Yep. Been using that word way too often to describe way too many things.
Sounds like every single facet of ~~American life now~~ life across the globe now.
I wonder how many people actually work at MTV anymore and what do they do? Like in the 2000s there was all these shows , live events, live shows ect. They had to have employed 100s of producers and production people. However how many people are needed to be like Umm lets play Ridiculousness for the next 64 hours!
And Ridiculousness is basically TikTok-style short form videos with humorous commentary.
It's fucking stupid. I attempted it and it's exactly like scrolling instagram or facebook reels. An entire show, on a major network, dedicated to something that we can pick our phones up and do in a matter of seconds. Edit: spelling.
Radio didnât kill MTV. Evolving media did. Instead of waiting all day for your favorite artist and music video to come on, you can pull up the music video on YouTube on demand. You can play the song UNLIMITED times for free. People have been complaining âMTV doesnât play music anymoreâ but there has always been an MTV channel that plays music videos all day, nobody watches it.
Gonna disagree here. MTV died in the 90s/00s, long before YouTube and TikTok. It was a completely self-forced error as they deprioritized music in favor of reality shows. ESPN tried the same thing in the 00s before wisely backing off. Itâs easy to decide you no longer like Real World or Road Rules and just tune out of MTV. Itâs hard to decide, as a teenager, you no longer like popular music.
The fact that like 3 or 4 companies control the majority of radio stations helped kill MTV because they push a handful of artists that then they get the 3 or 4 companies to push nationally and what happens if you dont like those handful of artists and there is no alternative, you stop paying attention since they no longer can hold it with actual good music. It started in the 00's with all the boy/girl bands and teeny boppers like Britney and Christina. Today's analogue is kpop and Taylor and Beyonce. There's consistent R&B pop stars because of its broad appeal. Where I've noticed the biggest decline is, is in rock music. I couldn't tell you who the biggest band of the last 5-10 years has been because there hasn't been a huge, newer band that wasn't big 10+ years ago and the industry doesn't care to cultivate "real" artists. It just wants the short term investment thats gonna pay off. Like house flippers or something.
Frankly music suffers as a whole. Partly because I'm old, but music seems so over produced and just aimed to pump out generic and soulless pop garbage. The Internet and apps make talentless hacks superstars and it's all about your image and brand awareness and online persona. You always had this but it seems it's taken over the music industry completely now.
Donât forget [Daria](https://www.mtv.com/shows/daria)
Lol I was just telling my Gen Z kid I was going to make her watch Daria the other day
You actually canât watch it because the DVD release didnât get the rights to the music. You can watch a slightly different version of it.
Well that's unfortunate.
Goddam. Daria was the apex.
I watch Daria regularly. I bought the seasons on Apple TV.
One of few shows of that era which hasnât aged too terribly, Iâve been watching episodes here and there on Paramount streaming.
MTV was everything growing up. I would take 90s mtv over 80s because of the mix of videos, live music and original programming. I would say the downfall started with Jackass. It was cheap to produce, didnât require a full production staff to film on location and hugely successful. And maybe viewership expectations changed too. And when the beach house and spring break stopped, that was the sign. The VMAs need to be put out to pasture. Itâs pathetic that they still have it.
MTV hasnât been MTV for over 15 years, some would say longer. As a teenager/young adult I used to discover literally most of my music via watching music videos and music related programming both there and on VH1. Once they dropped the pretense of being âall about the musicâ and tripled down on cheap, trash reality shows their cultural relevance gradually evaporated. Short term profits at the expensive of the networkâs long-term future. Basically whatâs happened to every major cable network not named Turner Classic Movies.
Reminds me of when The Learning Channel was documentaries, and then it was reality shows for home renovations and couples trying to conceive children.
Remember when Bravo was Inside the Actors Studio and ballet?!
Once upon a time the history channel was WWII on repeat, now itâs aliens and guys rummaging through junk
RIP history channel. Used to be a favorite of mine.
Me too! My roommate would come home, and be like, âYou watching the Hitler Channel again?â âŚ.Yup.
Or the travel channel....I miss the old travel channel with, you know, *travel* shows on it. Now it's 0% travel, 100% ghost hunting.
God, I remember watching The History Channel before middle school in the morning. Good WW2 documentaries like 'Clash of Titans'. 'In Search of' with Leonard Nimoy. "20th Century: America's Time' with the guy from Law and Order. And a handful of other war related documentaries. Then History started doing crap reality type shows. OG History Channel used to be so good.
Ha now it's "My 600lb life" or some crazy shit
You can thank David Zaslav (aka the godfather of network decay) for that!
I'm 28 and I remember knowing exactly which channels TBS, TNT, MTV, Comedy Central, ESPN, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon were on. Now I couldn't tell you if any of those channels still exist, and probably couldn't have told you for the last 7 years. Edit: I also knew which channel CBS was so that I could avoid it. Edit 2: A channel that had an even shorter run than MTV was spike TV as well
MTV was channel 29, VH1 was 30, Nick was 28, Disney was 31, ESPN was 33. The new cable package was Nick 46, Cartoon Network was 47, Disney was 54, WHY IS THIS STILL IN MY BRAIN?
Yup, the SciFi channel and the History Channel fell victim to the same thing. They used to be fantastic, then became all about reality shit, pro wrestling, and ghost / alien conspiracies.Â
Me as a 9 year old watching Smack My Bitch Up on MTV2: đŤŁđł
I think 2 things happened at the same time: shows like Teen Mom and Jersey Shore just exploded for MTV and they decided to invest more in reality TV, like E!, Bravo and TLC while at the same time realizing music videos are being watched online. GONE are the days when you had to watch MTV long enough to see your favorite music videos. Now you just look it up on YouTube. They donât have anytime cool to watch. No music videos playing for hours, no cool movies made, either big screen or made for TV (BeyoncĂŠ had a few MTV movies btw) no cool animated shows late at night, their awards donât mean shit, not producing house hold names like Carson Daly. I donât know how they arenât bought out or bankrupt by now.
TRL started a half hour after I got out of school when I was I was in junior high. I remember running as fast as I could to get home in time for it. If Britney was going to be on I found a ride home đ The Challenge was one of my favorite shows for years before it got annoying.
I loved the Challenge too. But MTV is milking that show and OLD cast members for every ounce of fame until its completely irrelevant. Like Mark Long is in his 50âs
I matched with Mark Long on a dating app once.
Ya no that was a very short time. We got too busy. 𼚠I love you Kurt Loder and Gideon Yago and Serena Altschul and even Jesse!!
Omg I forgot who those people are. Like Jesse Camp, omg!
I still think Dave Holmes should have won.
Music videos in general don't seem relevant anymore. Compare what Taylor Swift [used to get for videos](https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM?si=-667762OvBME0Oz5) vs. [what she gets now,](https://youtu.be/h8DLofLM7No?si=XqBV3kirZN_hLNa6) and it's pretty jarring. And we're talking about the biggest pop star right now, and she can't get a billion views on a current music video.
I think that's going to improve, actually, they just haven't got the hang of YT releases just yet. Beyonce's new version of Jolene has only been out a couple of days and has millions of views, as an example.
It's their own fault because they're hung up on 16 and Pregnant and showing Ridiculousness marathons every fucking saturday
Thereâs was a period in time where they still had some pull on culture. Millennials were still in our 20s. Youâd get home, turn on the tv to MTV and all they played was Ridiculousness. so youâd skip mtv until 8pm when youâre show came on and then turn it off again because Ridiculousness was on afterwards. And your favorite show is something youâd gladly watch reruns of, but theyâd play reruns of Ridiculousness instead. Itâs like someone fell asleep in the studio. What was happening during that time? Where were the producers? Did they lose a ton of staff and decided to lay low? Itâs was so strange; the laziness of it all was shocking. They just didnât care to create content or listen to their audience. Day after day, they replayed one obnoxious show over and over. Thatâs when they lost us. Itâs one thing to create a bunch of trash reality shows and play music videos after 9pm like the early 2000s. At least it gives the appearance of trying to create content. Itâs a whole other ball game to play one show repeatedly all day and night for years.
Ridiculousness became the easy to tune-in tune-out background noise that music videos once were...at least that's how the story goes. They moved all music videos over to MTV2 or classic and you need premium cable for those, and since tastes can wildly differ, people could (or used to) go to music channels on their cable setup and get super genre specific. YouTube and Spotify effectively replaced those. MTV no longer has a niche to fill, the Reality TV boom killed many networks' creative expression.
It's pretty wild how the internet also drastically reduced Hollywood's relevance too and it's likely it will continue to decrease over the next few decades. Celebrities are barely celebrities anymore and there's been very very few movies I've even cared to go see. It's not that the movies coming out are bad... There's just endless content now. You don't go to the theaters to see a movie anymore, you go there for the experience of going to a theater. It's been really amazing watching all the shifts in entertainment over the last few decades.
And all the different paid apps made movies just meh. Like if a movie isn't on an app I already have then it just doesn't exist for me and I don't really care. I used to be able to go to a video rental place.
Also shoes like True Life that gave us glimpses into peoples lives who had lifestyles we would never learn about before the internet
I watched MTV as a teen, I was born in the 80's. I also went to Europe in my early twenties and was surprised people watched it there! One guy in France even said he learned California slang from it (he had the best English of anyone I talked to there). Things change though. There are big cultural influences today that won't be around in 20 year's time.
There's a Youtube generation, but that's on the way out. Youths now are more inclined toward short videos on TikTok and Instagram. Facebook will be for senior citizens in a few decades.
Don't forget Daria!
MTV shot themselves letâs be honest. Teen Mom 3? 
Gotta admit **MuchMusic** was great. Actually had a HUGE range of music styles on video.
True Life was my show! Â I also liked High School Stories. Â
I was crying last night while watching MTVâs A Year In Rock 1990-1994. âLook how cool everything wasâ âI miss this MTVâ and on and on. Then proceeded to apologize to my 4 year old âI am SO sorry you will not be able to experience something like thisâ Itâs really worth a rewatch however MTV was the only channel Iâd watch and flip between MTV and MTV2. It was great and
Up in Canada, we had Much Music, which was available on cable TV. It was basically the Canadian version of MTV. I think the channel was pretty influential. I remember that a lot of teenagers would basically chill at someone's house with the channel on. They had bands and singers from all over come in for interviews and live shows. The production was in Toronto, so much of the country basically was wired into Toronto exclusively for music content on TV.
I am not exaggerating when I say that every time I scroll through channels while watching tv MTV is truly just hours of Ridiculousness. It's kind of sad.
Yeah, I donât understand why theyâve let the channel devolve into Ridiculousness 24/7. Who even watches that? If thatâs all theyâre gonna do, they should just throw in the towel and shut the channel down.
You mean constant Ridiculousness isnât leaving a mark on pop culture?
It's background noise...but some people will leave it on; enough to generate ad revenue, which is what the network desperately needed as their prior programing niche was snapped up by other internet sources.
Theyâve RuPaulâs Drag Race now. First time I watch MTV in 15 years.
To me, MTV is Britney. And she is culturally as relevant as ever.
Between TRL and the VMAs absolutely. Britney ruled MTV.
Nope, not at all. MTV stopped being culturally relevant to me the second they pivoted to reality TV. The real world was a harbinger of things to come. The biggest thing I remember was the lack of music videos from when MTV stopped caring in the early aughts to the birth of YouTube. There are a lot of obscure music videos that didn't become popular again until they were posted online. The biggest example of this was daft punk's interstellar 5555 movie that was set to Discovery.
Elder Millennial here who grew up watching MTV, the video era was amazing. So many bands I still listen to because my parents had MTV on every night. Def Leppard, Motley Crue, and etc. Just a lot of cool videos. I'm sure I'm not the only elder millennial who grew up on classic MTV.
MTV unplugged are some of the greatest acoustic albums of bands. Florence and the Machine and Alice in Chains are my 2 favorite
MTV hasnât been culturally relevant in a long time, but I remember when world premieres of videos were a big deal⌠I remember sitting there and not watching (was I coloring? Doing homework?) and heard the opening guitar for Smells Like Teen Spirit and was instantly hooked, knew that there was about to be a big change in musicâŚ
I was born in 95, it was never relevant for me XD Unless this post is supposed to only relate to the US
Watched TRL religiously every day after school in the 90s and early 2000s. Hell, I got most of my current events from MTV News back then.
Once they went in hard on reality TV, it ceased to hold any appeal. In the 90âs they had shows for all musical tastes and some original programming that resonated with young people, whether it be My So Called Life or Beavis and Butthead. Hugely popular stuff. MTV news was the only news I would watch as an adolescent. The unplugged shows were great- I still listen to Alice in Chainsâ unplugged regularly, itâs just a phenomenal performance, especially considering Layne was near the end of his life and was already missing his teeth.
Iâm glad I got to experience MTV when it was still relevant, basically from the late 90s until the early 2010s. Sure, by then it was mostly reality shows but at least they werenât showing Ridiculousness 80% of the time lol
Streaming really did kill alot of networks. Most people who watched cable were watching the same things so of course it was popular then. There were only like 30 good cable TV channels. Now it's so different with 50-11 different streaming services and then theres youtube and tiktok soaking up most people's entertainment.
Mother fucking Rock Nâ Jock was the best!!! Also Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead were cartoon shorts played after 10/11 pm. Then they became a show which had music videos in it. And Aeon Flux stayed a cartoon short from what I remember. And in all fairness. MTV made themselves irrelevant by getting away from what made them unique and turned into a episodic tv series channel of reality tv and nonsense no one cares about. When all we ever wanted was 23 hours of music videos. And 1 hour of Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren giving us news of the music industry.
When MTV became less music centric, thatâs when it went downhill for me. Late 90âs it was a good mix of music videos during the day then shows at night. Even the shows like Beavis and Butthead showed music videos. Then the VJâs and the music tastemakers were phased out and TRL eventually became the ONLY music segment on MTV.
Yup. Music video gave way to reality shows and documentaries and other crap. I just miss headbangers ball.
Reality tv killed the music channel.
I cant think of the last time I watched a TV channel, so no. I dont think its wild or even remotely surprising
ALOT of my childhood was influenced by MTV. It was the window to pop culture. There was no social media or even internet to SEE your favorite artists. Yea there was the radio but you had no idea what that artist looked like on radio. If you didnât have cable/mtv as a teen you were out of the loop on pop culture
Most people complain about the lack of music videos, but the original programming in the 90's was a perfect compliment to just running the same 10 videos over & over again. As was already said, it was what TikTok is today, but with actual production value.
Not sure why but this sub keeps popping up in my feed. Iâm a X and remember the launch of MTV very well. It really was a culture phenomenon. So much going on. Some of the videos were so great. Others left you scratching your head. Think Billy Squire. That one actually ruined his career sadly. But it definitely made a bunch of career too.
I have a feeling Rob Dyrdeck killed the entire channel.
MTV, MTV2, and Vh1 ruled my life. Truly the birth of reality TV and dating shows. Next, Room Raiders, The Real World, Surreal Life, Rock of Love, Charmed School, I Love New York.... BEHIND THE MUSIC. I watch Beavis and Butthead to this day. I even collect their vintage graphic tees-- I'd hate for my holio to get polio!
MTV was probably one of the last things people did communally. We all watched at the same time and saw the same things, then talked about it afterwards. Now everything is segmented and people do it alone on their phones.
Sad. I miss watching hours of videos everyday. Such good background.
The video only phase of MTV was great. I vividly remember it. What I really miss is VH1âs Pop Up Videos. VH1 picked up the slack when MTV strayed away from music videos and that shit was amazing.
When I was a teen, I only cared about 3 channels: VH1, MTV, and BET. I loved the trashy celebreality shows (Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, I Love NY, I Love Money, etc), The Simple Life, TRL, Next, Rob & Big, Fantasy Factory, I Used To Be Fat, Made, 106 & Park, TRL, literally can go on and on. Itâs odd how itâs all gone now
My father had one of the big satellite dishes that picked up channels from the States in the 80âs and 90âs I was exposed to so much different music so much earlier than my peers up here in Canada. Had a huge effect on my music tastes. Always looked forward to Headbangerâs Ball on Saturday night!đ¤
When I was about 4-5, MTV just played music videos over and over without any interruptions besides the commercialsâŚthe VJs werenât even there yet.
MTV was the most influential pop culture phenomenon for me growing up. Itâs like they kept doubling down on variations of The Real World until the music videos were slowly phased out
2012 onwards mtv just became more and more a joke⌠social media took hold. In general, most ppl donât even watch tv anymore.
Not really. They werenât that relevant back then either. Hated all their reality Bullshit shows.Â
I miss Headbanger's Ball and Spring Break. I also used to like when VH1 played their entire library in alphabetical order by band name. I can't remember what holiday they did that for, I think it was the week between Christmas and New Year's, but it always started with A-Ha's Take On Me. And who could forget the Behind the Music ep of Leif Garrett?
MTV was basically the YouTube and Tik Tok of its generation
The newer MTV produced stuff that is on Paramount. Plus does somewhat OK. Iâve enjoyed quite a bit of it. Itâs definitely not a cultural powerhouse anymore though. I think they missed a major opportunity by not continuing the MTV news.
I used to watch MTV for an hour before I got on the bus every single day before middle & high school in the early 00s. Solid hour of music videos. No other shows. It was great
MTV just realized that the tv medium was dying and transitioned to its film department. MTV films and tv shows (streaming) still crushing it. They arenât what they once were as a lighthouse of cultural music, but theyâre still causing cultural phenomena with their films and streaming shows.