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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And yet, A-ha’s “Take On Me”, has over 2 Billion views on YouTube.
YouTube rendered MTV obsolete.
There was (or is?) an “MTV Generation”? Who knew?
I gather (not being a TV watcher back then) that MTV was not bad with Rock stuff it covered. Apparently had a really cute chick named Martha Quinn or something that made it worth watching?
I heard it morphed to ghetto jungle chanting and went to hell.
It began dying before that. I'd say around the time they introduced Yo, MTV Raps and then moved into reality tv.
Detroit was slow getting cable so I had no idea what HBO or MTV were (except from the song Money for Nothing) until I spent four months in Anniston, Alabama, in 1983 courtesy of the U.S. Army. The motel on Quintard Ave had a pool, working AC, and cable. Spent days at Fort McClellan and nights catching up on movies and these new-fangled “music videos.” After I finally got my own cable, both music channels had started to go downhill.