The End of MTV or streaming killed music television
I’ll admit, I didn’t even know there were still music channels playing videos 24 hours a day under the MTV banner. I thought the linear television channel played endless re-runs of Ridiculousness and the scripted and reality shows had all moved to streaming on Paramount+. Still, there is something sad about the legacy format finally meeting its demise.
MTV was the central node for music in culture for roughly three decades. Arguably, it popularized both reality television and adult animation. Indisputably, it popularized music videos as a cultural form. MTV was simultaneously an arbiter of cool, a gatekeeper of mainstream relevance, and it had enough money and power that it could afford to be experimental.
It’s the ability to be experimental that feels like it is missing in contemporary culture.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about how we have not had a new cultural form in quite a while. Maybe that’s because the material of culture: sounds, screens, physical forms have been fully explored.
We have new ways to make videos and new ways to distribute them. But the innovations that come with that do not feel especially new. What is the difference a soap opera and a 'vertical drama' truly? It’s a bit like insisting a music video posted to YouTube is fundamentally different than a music video that aired on MTV.
To test this hypothesis, maybe MTV should reboot its own trashy serial Undressed (1999-2002). Structured as an anthology with an ever-shifting cast of loosely connected characters, it aired as a late-night summer soap opera. Alums included Christina Hendricks, future star of Mad Men, Adam Brody, future star of The O.C., Chad Michael Murray, future star of Gilmore Girls, and Pedro Pascal, future star of everything 2023.