On the night between December 31st and January 1st, the MTV television network discontinued its channels dedicated to the broadcast of video clips and music programs 24 hours a day, in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe. The decision of the Paramount Skydance group, owner of the network conglomerate of which MTV is part, had been known since October. It concerns channels that were still active in some countries, although much less followed than in the past: MTV Music (the only one that was still active in Italy too), MTV Live, MTV 80s, MTV 90s and others. However, the network’s generalist channel remains active as usual (in Italy on Sky 131), which has long been dedicated above all to reality shows and entertainment.
The main and most famous canal among the disused, MTV Musicconcluded the broadcasts as he had begun them, in 1981: by sending the video clip of the Buggles song Video Killed the Radio Star. In the UK the ending videos were different depending on the channel (MTV 90sdedicated to the successes of the nineties, sent Goodbye of the Spice Girls). In Italy several music-only MTV channels, including MTV Hits, MTV Classic e MTV Rockshad already concluded broadcasts between 2015 and 2020.
Even though the channels closed by MTV did not have the following they had in previous decades, the news sparked several comments in newspapers and on social media, mostly nostalgic. The MTV television channel was born in the United States. At one minute past midnight on August 1, 1981, it broadcast images of the countdown of a space launch, while the creator of the network and executive vice president of Warner, John Lack, announced: «Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll». At that point the MTV theme song had started, over images of the Apollo 11 moon landing and a flag with the MTV logo.
The announced end of the broadcasts also provided food for thought on the reasons why television channels that only broadcast video clips and music programs have become unpopular and economically unsustainable over time.
Video clips are still part of the music business, but diffusion occurs mostly on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. Making them has generally become a much less prolific, central and influential activity than during MTV’s peak popularity years. And the Internet has long been the main access point to music for any audience, including the younger ones, on whose tastes and habits MTV had based its success.
For at least three decades, before a major crisis in the music industry after the Internet, the popularity of videos broadcast on MTV had been a factor that strongly influenced record sales and made those records major commercial successes. Video clips made the fortune of great artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna, they required enormous investments and often famous directors and actors worked on them.
Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, also to seek new earning opportunities, MTV had expanded its offering to also include non-musical programmes: animated series and reality shows, especially The Osbourneswhich introduced a new genre.
– Read also: Before “The Osbournes” there was nothing like it
Due to the historical influence of MTV, video clips have long been considered both a musical promotion and, to some extent, artistic format. But in today’s industry in general there are many doubts about whether they are still a profitable medium. Jennifer Byrne, head of development at British production company Academy Films, told the Guardian that «labels are no longer willing» to invest in videos as they once did, and that now the question they are asking is «how do you reach all these different audiences and edit it [il video] in 10 different ways?”.
According to Byrne, however, music videos are still a sort of launching pad for directors, as for example it was for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directors of the film Everything Everywhere All at Oncewinner of seven Oscars. They began in the world of music videos, as did Jonathan Glazer, the film’s English director The area of interestvery active as a video clip director.
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