MTV Turns 30: What's Your Favorite Memory?

Among people of a certain generation (i.e. people who came of age in the 1980s) MTV has been something of a misnomer for at least a decade.

Long ago, it stopped being “Music Television” and morphed into something else.

A quick check of the weekly schedule reveals far more programming devoted to reality shows than to music. It’s been that way for a while. And because of that, MTV has been an easy target for critics of trash television.

But today the network turns 30 and if nothing else, it deserves credit for making it that far.

While 30 is not exactly middle aged, it is not exactly youthful either, especially for a media company. In the age of YouTube, iTunes and now Spotify, MTV has somehow managed to stay in the game if somewhat removed from the cutting edge.

It wasn’t always that way, though. There was a time when MTV was at the vanguard of what was happening in music and the culture.

The network was founded in 1981 to basically give bands a forum to promote their new record or their upcoming tour and the earliest videos were little more than glorified performance pieces—that were lip-sung, of course.

That quickly changed however, as bands saw the value of investing time (and money) into video production. Videos took on a narrative structure and existed in an almost separate universe from its audio counterpart. Weeks or even months before a record was released in stores, the first single would have its video world premiere on MTV, thereby keeping a band in the public’s consciousness. The publicity attendant to the video was equal or even greater than the music. A typical day at MTV would feature the “world premiere of the new R.E.M. video coming up at noon and the premier of the new Tom Petty video at five.” And millions of an artist’s fans made a point to tune in at the appointed hour.

It is no coincidence that, with some exception, the most popular artists of the 1980s—Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson—were the top video stars. The videos were events unto themselves separate from the song they were animating. Fans would say they “hate the song but love the video” which still served the ultimate goal of keeping the artist in the public’s eye.

Recognizing the power of music videos, other “music” stations popped up on cable (VH1, CMT) and shows appeared on broadcast channels.

MTV stayed ahead of the competition by adapting to an expanding culture and occasionally, fostering it. Criticized for a limited rock playlist in its early days, MTV started airing more pop. They were quick to bring rap into the mainstream in the late 80s and to chronicle the “alternative” movement in the early 1990s. For a long time, if you were a band, you hadn’t made it unless your video was on MTV.

The mainstream music scene became so broad by the mid-1990s that it was almost impossible for just one channel to broadcast it. By then MTV wasn’t really trying. They were airing shows like The Real World and Beavis and Butt-head. MTV2 was launched in 1996 and for a while it satisfied traditionalists in search of more music-themed programming, but soon it too adopted a celebrity-driven, reality format.

With audiences able to listen to or watch their favorite artists on demand, it was unrealistic to expect fans to tune into a channel just to watch videos. But there was a time when that was a very powerful drawing card and for bringing music videos into the culture MTV is deserving of birthday wishes. Although it would be nice if they could somehow find a way to put the “M” back in MTV.