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Television

MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air (rollingstone.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music -- which launched in 2011 -- notably ended its run by airing the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first visual to air when MTV launched in the United States in 1981.

MTV's parent company, Paramount Skydance, is also expected to shutter music-only channels in Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil. Despite axing much of its dedicated music programming, MTV's flagship channels are still expected to keep broadcasting in the U.K. and elsewhere. Like in the U.S., these channels primarily air massively popular reality programs, as opposed to music videos.

MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air More | Reply

MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air

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  • Yeah, for idiots and those with very low IQ.

    MTV was better off playing music videos. The downfall started with Jenny McCarthy on that dumb show 'Singled Out'. Stopped watching it after that and never went back.

    But to be fair, there doesn't appear to be a lot of interest in music videos anymore, otherwise, someone would air them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Money for nothing [youtube.com] intro where Sting sings is no longer working.

    • YouTube and social media kinda ate the entire music video market but bands are still making them.

      If you go on some of those free steaming services like pluto.tv there are still music video channels, which is fun to check out now and again, particularly as they at least have genre and time period specific channels so it's a bit more focused.

      • Artists are still making pretty creative music Videos in the post cable TV era. They just post them on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.... If MTV was smart, they would have moved everything to Twitch, YouTube, etc... and kept some live programing there... My guess is that they want easy revenue generators, and a music video channel would let them print "investor value"...

      • The inflection point where music started going downhill was when digital recording was introduced into the studio.

        It went from a recording and production process with a limited number of overdubbing due to the compounding of noise to one where you could do an infinite number of overdubs and sampling with only adding a tiny amount of noise.

        The earlier analogue microphone to tape to record process meant that each person in the recording process had to be excellent at their job and produced better quality reco

        • This is really only applicable to pop music though, there is and has been great music still being produced. Every decade of pop music has your breakout acts and then the me-too's that follow. Even back in the 50's and 60's a lot of tape and vinyl was wasted on shite.

          Music like most arts abides by Sturgeon's law to some percent it's just that today with digital recording there's way more of it.

          AI music will fill the role of music that you don't actually listen to but that's it, or at least, I do not unders

    • Re:"Massively Popular" (Score:5, Informative)

      by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Friday January 02, 2026 @06:53PM (#65897933)

      Yeah, for idiots and those with very low IQ.

      Sadly, a HUGE demographic.

    • But to be fair, there doesn't appear to be a lot of interest in music videos anymore, otherwise, someone would air them.

      People go to Youtube for them now, since they have nearly all of them, and you can watch them in whichever order you like.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        This just points to how much MTV dropped the ball in regards to what was once their core business. The internet came about but they kept just plugging along with the old business model like the world wasn't changing around them. They didn't have to cede this part of their business to Youtube, they chose to by doing nothing to address changing consumer habits.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by teg ( 97890 )

          This just points to how much MTV dropped the ball in regards to what was once their core business. The internet came about but they kept just plugging along with the old business model like the world wasn't changing around them. They didn't have to cede this part of their business to Youtube, they chose to by doing nothing to address changing consumer habits.

          MTV dropped music videos and migrated to crappyvision (reality shows) many years before YouTube was founded - they started in the 90s and finished around 2000. No music, just cheap junk for idiots.

    • What, not when they invented "reality TV" with The Real World, three years prior? That's when I mark the beginning of the end.

      Music Videos still seem to generate interest, but on YouTube.

  • I honestly thought they changed to purely reality content decades ago. If these "actual Music TV" channels were still available where I live, they seem to have been hiding well. I would be sad, if I didn't hold my MTV lament some time around the turn of the millennium. Still, a belated toast from my teenage self for the after midnight version of Poison.

    • Yeah, I was surprised to read that they still had music video channels. So far as I know, I've never seen them anywhere.

  • The typical demographic for MTV when it began is near retirement age now.

  • "They don't play many videos anymore" - Butthead, (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday January 02, 2026 @07:23PM (#65897955)

    "They don't play many videos anymore" - Butthead, 1993

  • Honestly, I didn't know MTV still had music-only channels.

    Or even music channels, for that matter.

    • Back when I was a teen in the early 80s we only looked forward to Friday Night Videos. My friends and I just didn't understand the appeal of watching music videos all the time on a dedicated channel. There was too much to do outside with friends. Cooped up in a house was not a thing back then.

    • Precisely, same here!

    • Re:Internet killed the video star? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Friday January 02, 2026 @09:39PM (#65898229)

      Correct. What may have been the final nail in the coffin on MTV showing music videos happened in 2012, when PSY's "Gangnam Style" was posted on YouTube and within a few months, it became a gigantic worldwide sensation without needing MTV. That very success using YouTube drove record companies to start posting home videos instead of waiting for MTV. Indeed, you wonder would Beyoncé would have done the "visual album" version of her acclaimed album _Lemonade_ if it weren't for it being able to be posted on YouTube.

  • Too much competition for attention (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday January 02, 2026 @07:37PM (#65897969)
    When MTV got its start music was still a big deal because there just wasn't a lot else. You had a stereo in your room and if you were really well off you might have had a small television set and if you were lucky cable that you were probably stealing.

    I Remember getting a game boy so that I could play the games on it without having to fight for the TV.

    I don't know how much longer it'll last since AI is basically taking all the electronics manufacturing for itself but at least for the last decade or two cheap televisions and cheap game consoles and cheap internet means that people have a lot of entertainment options besides music. So it's no surprise that MTV is struggling.
    • That depends on what you means by "cheap game consoles" and "cheap internet".

      The internet prices really shouldn't be going up as that provides a direct impediment to the other subscription services that everyone and their dog wants to force everyone else into. More money for ISPs means less money for subscriptions, because you need the internet connection to have the subscription work in the first place.

      Modern game consoles are a lost cause at this point. They haven't fulfilled their original purpose of

  • Changed from Music Televison to Moronic Television.

  • The Dead Kennedys called it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ahoffer0 ( 1372847 ) on Friday January 02, 2026 @07:48PM (#65897993)

    Hi, I'm your video DJ
    I always talk like I'm wigged out on quaaludes
    I wear a satin baseball jacket everywhere I go
    My job is to help destroy
    What's left of your imagination
    By feeding you endless doses of sugar-coated mindless garbage

    You've turned rock and roll rebellion into Pat Boone sedation
    Making sure nothing's left to the imagination

    MTV get off the
    MTV get off the
    MTV get off the air!

  • Was it expensive to send music videos 24/7? Did the revenue from advertising not cover the expenses? Couldn't/didn't they charge the record companies for rotation?

    Intuitively I would have expected it to be extremely cheap to broadcast music videos while it also would make a reasonable revenue from commercials = profitable, but maybe my intuition is off?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evslin ( 612024 )

      MTV had to pay to run the videos, as I understand it they also had to share ad revenue, and ad revenue was a challenge because audience attention span was measured in 3-5 minute increments rather than in half-hour or hour-long blocks of time. The economics were never favourable for them; the only reason they've hung around this long is because they had the right idea at the right time in the early 1980s with running music videos on cable television, and they pivoted out to reality TV a decade later.

      • MTV had to pay to run the videos, as I understand it they also had to share ad revenue, and ad revenue was a challenge because audience attention span was measured in 3-5 minute increments rather than in half-hour or hour-long blocks of time. The economics were never favourable for them; the only reason they've hung around this long is because they had the right idea at the right time in the early 1980s with running music videos on cable television, and they pivoted out to reality TV a decade later.

        That is not true. They didn't pay for most of the videos, and when they did pay, it was peanuts. https://www.forbes.com/2005/09... [forbes.com]

      • AFAIK, the MTV music channels had been part of paid packages only for many years, and didn't have any ads. I occasionally tuned in to MTV 80s and never saw them running an ad.
  • Its just TV now?

  • As long as Rage keeps going. They get famous musicians in to play whatever they like. Tonight's DJ is Jocko Homo from Devo. One of my favorites was Mike Patton from Faith No More. So many great guests.

    From looking at the current playlist [abc.net.au] isn;t as long as I expect, it generally plays music videos from 12:00 am to 7am without a single commercial, not that I can stay awake all night anymore to find out. lols Still great to just have on. Enjoy!

  • Some people still use AOL email....my brother.

    • Some people still use AOL email....my brother.

      Related, what's a "channel"?

      it's amazing how long it takes for technologies and business models to die out. I was reminded yesterday that Netflix stopped shipping DVDs only three years ago.

      But maybe I just live in a "everything is streaming" bubble. I know OTA TV and cable are still substantial businesses.

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