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👋 Good Morning. MTV's last music channel signed off playing "Video Killed the Radio Star"—the exact song that launched them 43 years earlier. This time, MTV was the corpse.

Read time: 4 minutes | 1,034 words

STORY 

👀 The End of MTV (Again)

August 1, 1981, 12:01 a.m. "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll." The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" flickers onto screens. MTV is born.

Within five years, the channel owned youth culture. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" changed everything in 1983. The 13-minute John Landis-directed short film didn't just break MTV's racial barrier (the network had been avoiding Black artists), it became the first music video added to the National Film Registry. Madonna became Madonna because of MTV. The network hit 99 million American households by 2011.

The Golden Years Were Insane

September 1984. The first VMAs. Madonna in a wedding dress rolling around on stage performing "Like a Virgin." Parents across Middle America lost their minds. MTV had announced exactly what kind of network it would be.

By 1988, Yo! MTV Raps launched. Fab 5 Freddy, Doctor Dré, and Ed Lover brought Run DMC, Tupac, Biggie, and Public Enemy into suburban living rooms. Hip-hop went mainstream through MTV's two-hour Saturday afternoon slot.

Then came the late-night specialty shows. Headbangers Ball gave Metallica, Pantera, and Guns N' Roses three hours every week. 120 Minutes with Matt Pinfield played Radiohead and Nirvana before radio touched them. MTV wasn't just playing videos. It was creating taste.

November 1993. Nirvana Unplugged. Kurt Cobain in candlelight covering "The Man Who Sold the World." Stripped down. Haunting. It felt like a goodbye nobody saw coming.

March 1993. Beavis and Butt-Head premiered. Mike Judge's animated slackers watching music videos and grunting commentary became MTV's highest-rated show. Rolling Stone called it "the biggest phenomenon on MTV since the heyday of Michael Jackson." The show spawned Daria, basically invented South Park, and proved MTV could mock its own audience while printing money.

Here's the problem nobody saw coming: the business model was broken from day one.

A TV network sells ads based on 30-minute or hour-long shows. MTV played 3-5 minute videos on shuffle. Viewers changed channels between songs. Advertisers couldn't target demographics when the programming jumped from Duran Duran to Run-DMC to Metallica.

The channel was bleeding money playing music 24/7.

The Pivot

So in 1992, MTV launched "The Real World." Seven strangers in a house. The first reality show accidentally invented an entire genre that would eventually kill the network.

Then came the flood.

• 1998: TRL debuts. Carson Daly counting down videos in Times Square. Teenage girls screaming for NSYNC. It was appointment television, the last time music videos created that kind of cultural moment.

• 2000: Cribs. Celebrities showing off their houses. Mariah Carey's bathtub shoes. MTV basically invented Instagram lifestyle flex culture a decade early.

• 2000: Jackass. Johnny Knoxville doing stunts so stupid MTV had to run disclaimers. Spawned a film franchise. Proved you didn't need music to print money.

• 2002: The Osbournes. Ozzy Osbourne's family reality show. Proved rock stars were just confused dads. Made Sharon and Kelly more famous than Black Sabbath ever did.

• 2002: Celebrity Deathmatch. Claymation celebrities fighting to the death. Absurdly violent. Somehow aired for nine years.

By the mid-1990s, music videos were background noise. The network that made careers now made train-wreck television.

The VMA Circus Kept It Relevant

The Video Music Awards became MTV's real cultural engine.

• 2001: Britney with an albino python draped on her shoulders performing "I'm a Slave 4 U." Peak early-2000s chaos.

• 2003: Madonna, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera. The torch-passing kiss heard round the world. Justin Timberlake watched awkwardly from the audience.

• 2009: Kanye West storms the stage during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech. "Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time." The phrase entered the culture permanently. Beyoncé later brought Taylor back on stage to finish her speech. The feud lasted over a decade.

• 2010: Lady Gaga's meat dress. Actual raw beef. PETA freaked out. It was the most VMAs thing that ever happened.

The VMAs proved MTV still mattered. Just not for music.

Then YouTube launched in 2005.

Suddenly anyone could watch any music video, anytime, for free. No waiting for rotation. No commercials. Just instant access.

OK Go's treadmill video got a million views in one week. VEVO built an empire on YouTube's infrastructure. MTV tried pivoting to internet streaming. Too late.

2009: Jersey Shore premiered. Snooki, The Situation, GTL culture. The moment MTV fully committed to reality over music and never looked back.

TRL cancelled in 2008. Headbangers Ball gone. Yo! MTV Raps gone. 120 Minutes gone. Jersey Shore kept the lights on, but the music was gone.

The End of Music Television

This week, on December 31, 2025, MTV's remaining 24-hour dedicated music channels went dark worldwide.

Five specialty music channels closed: MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live shut down in the UK, Europe, Australia, Brazil, Poland, and France as part of Paramount Global's cost-cutting measures.

MTV Music in the UK played its final video at 6 a.m. GMT. MTV 90s closed with the Spice Girls' "Goodbye." MTV 00s ended with NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye." Club MTV played Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music," then stopped the music.

The final video on MTV Music?

"Video Killed the Radio Star."

The main MTV channel continues broadcasting reality shows, pop culture programming, and the annual VMAs. But the original vision of 24-hour music television - the reason MTV was created - is officially over.

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INSIGHT

🎯 Don't Monetize Yourself Into Irrelevance

The Insight: MTV had a monetization problem, not a product problem. Music videos couldn't sell 30-minute ad blocks. Reality TV could. So they pivoted to Jersey Shore and printed money for a decade. Then YouTube offered MTV's original product for free—and MTV had nothing left to defend. They'd already abandoned the territory. The main MTV channel still exists, still makes money. But the thing that made MTV matter? That's what died on December 31, 2025.

1. Identify Your Actual Differentiator

MTV thought they were an entertainment network. Wrong. They were THE music video network. When they chased easier revenue, they became just another reality channel. The brand survived. The relevance didn't.

Action: Write down what customers would actually mourn if you disappeared tomorrow. Not your product category. The specific thing only you do. That's your differentiator. Protect it or accept that you're slowly becoming replaceable.

2. Fix the Model, Keep the Magic

MTV could've packaged videos into themed shows with premium ad rates. They could've built the streaming platform that became YouTube. They could've owned artist development instead of just playing finished videos. They chose the nuclear option instead: abandon music entirely for reality TV.

Action: List three ways to improve monetization of your core offering before exploring pivots that compromise your identity. If you can't find three, you're not thinking hard enough.

MTV didn't die broke. They're still profitable. But they died irrelevant to music. Revenue without relevance is just a countdown to replacement. Someone else will do what you stopped doing—and they'll own the future you abandoned.

MEME