At midnight Dec. 31, 2025, an era of music that shaped generations of artists and audiences officially ended. MTV shut down its music channels, not just moving them to a different channel or platform, but erasing them from cable entirely. The music channel that had once ruled pop culture has become a shell of its former self, a cautionary tale about what happens when iconic brands fail to evolve with their audiences and technology.
The Beginning of mtv
MTV launched one minute after midnight Aug. 1, 1981, with “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. In its first year, MTV struggled financially with minimal advertising revenue and substantial losses. It was only available on certain cable systems, sometimes not even in major cities, so a lot of people couldn’t get MTV. Little by little, however, the word spread anyway.
MTV was particularly unique as it was the first television network to focus only on music, showing music videos 24/7. Videos would be introduced by video jockeys, or VJs, similar to the DJs or disc jockeys that ran radios. The VJs were on-air presenters, introducing videos or specials, reading viewer mail and hosting artist interviews and in-studio appearances. They guided people through what to watch, who was new and who was next.
Before MTV, music videos were mostly promotional tools. They were simply short clips that might play on late-night shows or be shown before concerts, but they weren’t considered an art form or a marketing tool. MTV turned music videos into a central way for artists to express themselves, build an image and reach audiences.
Labels started pouring money into videos, and they became essential to a marketing campaign. The network transformed how an entire generation experienced music culture, turning it from something people listened to into something they watched.
MTV didn’t just change the music industry. It controlled pop culture, deciding what was cool, influencing fashion trends and becoming the single-biggest influence on teen culture. Teenagers looked to their favorite music videos for the latest trends, copying Madonna’s lace gloves and teased hair, or emulating Prince’s gender-bending glam. MTV was no longer just a channel; it was the heartbeat of youth culture.
reality tv era
In the ‘90s, MTV began to expand into reality TV and game shows. MTV’s first major reality show was “The Real World,” which debuted in 1992, completely changing television shows. “The Real World” put seven young adults with specific personalities in a house and filmed their unscripted lives. It was one of the first shows of its kind and is credited with being the birth of modern reality TV.
With the success of “The Real World,” MTV began to expand more outside of music, creating adult animation shows like “Beavis and Butt-Head” and “Daria,” as well as more reality shows like “Punked,” “Cribs” and “Laguna Beach.” Some criticized MTV for moving away from music, but this shift showed just how much the channel influenced broader entertainment trends. Shows like “The Osbornes” and “Jersey Shore” shaped pop culture in ways few other networks could.
By this time, MTV had largely relegated music videos to off-peak hours or sister channels, fully embracing reality TV and general entertainment programming for its main lineup. In 2008, they played music videos for just three hours a day, compared to eight hours a day in 2000, which was almost two-thirds less than the amount they played in 1995. They launched MTV 2 in the mid ‘90s, their second attempt at a 24-hour music channel, but that quickly followed the same path as MTV and eventually stopped showing music at all.
The program was never very profitable as a 100% music-based network, even in the ‘80s, and music content was only becoming less popular as pop culture changed. Then, the president of MTV Van Toffler said, “Clearly, the novelty of just showing music videos has worn off. It’s required us to re-invent ourselves to a contemporary audience.”
With reality shows, they solved their cost problem and content problem at the same time, and as a result, music became the soundtrack to personality-driven stories, not the story itself.
The internet
In 2005, YouTube was launched, allowing anyone to upload and watch videos on demand. This was a huge blow to MTV, as YouTube was free, global and instantly accessible. It allowed people to watch what they wanted, when they wanted, and that included music videos. On MTV, music videos were controlled by the VJs, meaning audiences had no control over what played and when it played; with YouTube, they had all the control.
Soon after YouTube launched, record labels started releasing videos straight to YouTube via Vevo, bypassing MTV entirely. For the first time, artists and labels could upload music videos directly to the public. No programming departments, no label politics and no waiting for a VJ slot or a countdown window.
Artists no longer needed MTV. The channel went from being the gatekeeper to just one option, and not even the best option. People didn’t have to wait for a show or video to come on anymore; they could click a button and it appeared.
Additionally, platforms like Netflix changed general video consumption habits, further cutting into the time young people spent on cable TV. Music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music also changed music discovery. Playlists and algorithms replaced MTV as the arbiters of taste and place of discovery.
Culturally, MTV no longer organizes youth conversations or influences pop culture. Major music moments now break online, spread through social media and become global without MTV ever needing to host them. When a program built on relevance stops feeling necessary, that’s when the decline becomes permanent.
As the years went on, the program slowly lost its identity, struggled to maintain profitability and failed to adapt to the rapidly shifting media landscape. Today, MTV is a forgotten channel, mainly relegated to playing hours upon hours of the show Ridiculousness, looking nothing like the powerhouse it once was.
It’s impossible to imagine modern music without MTV’s influence. Everything from the way artists launch albums to the importance of visuals in music promotion can be traced back to MTV’s rise in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Even social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where short videos can turn a song into a hit overnight, are following a path that MTV laid decades ago.