Posted on 12/11/2025 6:29:27 PM PST by Angelino97
The trouble with nostalgia is that it appears to rewire our minds, bringing only pleasant memories to the forefront of our consciousness. It is incredibly effective at erasing the things we don’t want to think about. We remember bubblegum and video games more than malaria or third-world starvation. Our salad days are filtered through rose-tinted glasses; we assume everything was better in the past.
I was thinking about this recently after reading that MTV would be shutting down at the end of this year. As someone born in the final minutes of the 1970s, I am a member of Generation X, the so-called “MTV Generation.”
In many ways, the demise of MTV can be interpreted as part of the fading relevance of Gen X. Stuck between idealistic boomers and optimistic millennials, we’re the self-aware, Chuck Palahniuk-reading pessimists (think Fight Club) who watched every countercultural icon become just another image on t-shirts. It wasn’t that the revolution wasn’t televised; there was no revolution—just the background noise of an overpriced shopping mall and the relentless march toward middle age.
For the first half of its existence, MTV felt genuinely refreshing: It was the first channel dedicated to pumping out music videos 24 hours a day. As a hormonal teenager, I was seduced by the flashy graphics, schizo-editing, and telegenic hosts, all imbued with a youthful rebelliousness. The cable network had an anarchic energy, operating in sharp contrast to the dull, sterile world of traditional mainstream television. It felt dangerous and subversive. At least that’s what you think when you’re 13, high on testosterone and self-righteous fury. Ah, the naïveté of youth!
Upon its launch in 1981, it was a commercial disaster, accruing merely a few hundred thousand dollars in advertising revenue during its inaugural year and incurring losses exceeding $50 million. On the verge of bankruptcy, the network hired famous musicians, such as Mick Jagger, Cyndi Lauper, and David Bowie, to feature in a series of advertisements aimed at encouraging fans to contact their local cable companies with the demand, “I WANT MY MTV!”
By 1992, 60 percent of American households had access to MTV. This rapid growth led to a de facto monopoly over pop culture. The brand dictated fashion, attitudes, and musical tastes. The network employed an old radio strategy called narrowcasting to target a specific demographic within its audience to advertisers.
Mike Judge’s satirical slacker animation, Beavis and Butthead, captured the grunge-oriented aesthetic that characterized Gen X. It wasn’t so much that it had its finger on the pulse as it did on the wallets of every teenager in the Western world. Its programming was built around planned obsolescence. Every few years, a new sound or style revolution sent kids running to thrift stores in search of the latest in-group signifiers and accessories.
Success brought criticism. This was the age of moral panic. MTV, like video games, was yet another “home invader” corrupting the minds and morals of the youth. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” video enraged cultural conservatives who saw the risqué clothing and lyrics as a symptom of Western civilization’s demise, and the left denounced the network’s unfettered commercialism, which it considered a kind of Faustian bargain, in which integrity was traded for fame. Getting on MTV was part of selling out, basically. The Dead Kennedys yelled “MTV Get Off the Air!” while Beck wrote a song called “MTV makes me wanna smoke crack.”
A remarkable aspect of capitalism is its adaptability—it has evolved to profit from dissent, rather than merely contain it. MTV demonstrated this by co-opting and transforming angst into a marketable product. In a way, it was an embryonic form of woke capitalism—painting a rainbow flag on a cruise missile no more implies that Raytheon favors the lives of transgender people than it does innocent civilians in the Middle East. A new iron law emerged: the counterculture is always commodified, and rebellion is the ultimate spectacle.
The death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain in 1994 signaled the beginning of the end of MTV’s golden age. As ratings dropped and youngsters tuned out, it did what any struggling company does. To maintain its cultural hegemony, the network reinvented itself. It sidelined the broadcast of nonstop music videos, basically its USP (unique selling position), and in their place, reality shows about trivial teen drama, such as The Real World and Jersey Shore, began to dominate its schedule. If the network had any claims to be revolutionary, it died with the introduction of reality TV.
MTV’s tragic history reads like a laundry list of constant reinventions as it struggled to stay relevant. With its roots in the Walkman era and its growth in the digital age of CDs, MTV couldn’t compete with the internet’s technological innovations. Other media learned to adapt; MTV stuck to its guns. Its current lineup includes Catfish, Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, and Dating Naked. Mark Fisher, the cultural theorist, was right: neoliberalism leads to the “desacralization of culture.”
This is both a criticism and a lamentation. Regardless of its flaws, it drew us together. For a few brief moments, it defined the zeitgeist—every American over the age of 50 can recall where they were when Thriller was released, and Headbangers Ball encouraged a generation to form awful thrash metal bands in our parents’ garages. While it might have felt more like a connection to shopping at Hot Topic, it still brought us together. This connection has been severed, lost to an age of AI slop and doomscrolling as podcasters yell into the ether.
Whatever, never mind…
Late in 1981, MTV featured the “Jimi Plays Berkeley” video. It was later than weekend prime time in Michigan when it aired. That was the best thing I’ve ever seen on MTV.
Kennedy is doing well on Fox. She turns up on The Five and on Gutfeld.
I still remember jumping off the school bus way ahead of my stop, racing through the woods to my house, to get inside right at 3:00 so I could see the current Duran Duran video on MTV, which was always played at 3:04. I had to cut through the woods because if I rode the bus all the way around the block to my stop, I would always miss the video.
Mrs. Former wjcsux and I used to spend hours watching MTV in the mid 80’s when she was pregnant with our youngest.
I’m sure the neighbors appreciated the screaming pre-teens bolting through their backyards looking for their Duran Duran fix.
Video killed the radio star…
Oh-wah-oh…
Those were the days.
I will probably get beat up for this, but I really think MTV destroyed real music. Prior to video, it was really homely guys making thought provoking and entertaining music. After MTV it became processed music presented by model like performers. It was mostly appearance, and less artistic style. I mean, I don’t think I would have ever heard Duran Duran, or Missing Persons if it wasn’t for video.
Does anyone do basic research or have an editor that fact-checks anymore?
MTV isn’t shutting down.
MTV’s parent company, Paramount Global, plans to shut down five MTV-branded music channels in the U.K. and parts of Europe by December 31, 2025. The affected channels include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, MTV Live, and Club MTV, long-running networks that played nonstop hits, classic throwbacks, and live performances.
The thing probably peaked around 1985... Whenever I hear the opening synth riff of Aha’s “Take On Me,” I remember those days. Good times.
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MTV shut down around 1989.
Why would anyone watch MTV when they have YouTube, Tik Tok etc for free with equal or better content of every kind?
MTV shut down long ago. They pushed all the music videos to VH1 and turned MTV into hiphop and rap and stupid stuff like jackass and bevis and butthead. Bevis and butthead was funny and all but I still wanted to watch music videos.
MarthaQuin.
Married her childhood heartthrob Bobby Brady.
MTV is just shutting down some ancillary channels. The primary channel is not going anywhere, anytime soon.
“In many ways, the demise of MTV can be interpreted as part of the fading relevance of Gen X.”
Speaking as a representative of GenX, I don’t think we’re particularly concerned about a loss of relevance. As a generation, we are and were never concerned about what others thought of us. We just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit. I think that’s all we ever wanted, actually.
CC
I like to call it the MTV (Empty-V) music Holocaust. As soon as that show went on the air, music quality did a complete vertical nose dive down, down, boom. It’s when the record companies realized they no longer need quality to sell a record, just an interesting video played 90000 times a day on MTV. The Madonna disease would have never happened without Empty-V, where karaoke was promoted as actual musicanship and it still goes on to this day. Now it seems to be getting worse with the advent of Ai. Now music will not only be bland, but completely devoid of humanity. It could even get as bad as Taylor Swift. OK maybe not THAT bad.
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