MTV’s 24-Hour Music Channels Go Dark Worldwide As Era Officially Ends

As of immediately, December 31, MTV’s remaining 24-hour music channels throughout the globe are formally going darkish, bringing a definitive finish to an period that formed popular culture for greater than 4 a long time.

MTV’s U.Ok.-based music channels — MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Membership MTV, and MTV Dwell — all ceased broadcasting immediately. Native media retailers have additionally confirmed shutdowns affecting MTV music channels in Australia, Poland, France, Brazil, and a number of different areas worldwide.

MTV’s flagship channel will stay on the air, although it is going to proceed prioritizing non-music actuality programming relatively than round the clock video rotation. In a placing little bit of historic symmetry, MTV Music signed off by airing The Buggles‘ “Video Killed the Radio Star” — the very first music video ever broadcast when MTV launched in 1981.

The choice arrives as Paramount Skydance strikes to scale back prices throughout its world media portfolio following its merger earlier this 12 months, with area of interest linear channels among the many casualties.

MTV first launched in 1981, instantly redefining how music was consumed and marketed. For years, it was a cultural tastemaker — breaking artists, defining style, and shaping whole generations. Within the twenty first century, the community reinvented itself as soon as once more by massively profitable actuality programming similar to Jersey Shore, The Hills, Teen Mother, and Catfish.

However with immediately’s shutdown, the ultimate traces of MTV’s music-video roots have vanished from conventional tv. And I do know, MTV sucked up to now few a long time.

Nonetheless, there is no denying MTV’s influence on the world of heavy metallic. By the mid-Eighties, bands like Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, and later Metallica proved that metallic may ship each scores and report gross sales. MTV’s willingness to air heavier movies—generally late at evening—helped convey metallic out of the underground and into mainstream youth tradition.

That relationship peaked with Headbangers Ball (1987–1995), which turned MTV’s major metallic showcase and a vital tastemaker for the style. Airing weekly, the present uncovered hundreds of thousands to thrash, glam, loss of life metallic, and rising excessive kinds, whereas additionally offering interviews and scene protection.

Throughout this era, metallic was not simply tolerated however central to MTV’s id, with artists like Metallica, Weapons N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, and Pantera receiving common rotation throughout the community.

By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, MTV’s focus shifted towards various rock, nü-metal, and finally actuality programming, resulting in the cancellation of Headbangers Ball and a gentle decline in devoted metallic protection. Temporary revivals on MTV2 within the 2000s catered extra to nostalgia than cultural management.