MTV DEAD

Ellie

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All of their music channels officially going off air tonight, with just regular MTV remaining, which only shows reality programming.

Was nice seeing the lovely Ray Cokes being interviewed on the BBC this morning, with him commenting that the start of the real downfall of the channel here was the regionalisation of it instead of the glorious MTV Europe.
 
MTV Select was the go to after school show growing up for a good few years.
 
Ironically MTV as a studio seems to be doing quite well. I guess Viacom will keep the name as it has a strong legacy in content.

It’s quite strange really, as when I worked there back in 2003 (when I discovered Dotmusic as it happens) it was raking in so much money.
 
All of their music channels officially going off air tonight, with just regular MTV remaining, which only shows reality programming.

Was nice seeing the lovely Ray Cokes being interviewed on the BBC this morning, with him commenting that the start of the real downfall of the channel here was the regionalisation of it instead of the glorious MTV Europe.

I agree with this so much, but I also wonder where MTV Europe would fit into a modern landscape with everything so readily available everywhere online anyway. The fun of MTV Europe for me, at least, was discovering stuff from other countries- Mylene Farmer, Eros Ramazotti, Ace of Base- none of my love would have happened without MTV Europe.

The other issue for me was just that MTV relied so heavily on reality stuff. I never understood how Music Television didn’t play music. It led me to other channels.

Though presumably music TV itself as a concept is dead? I have zero idea whether there are any music channels left- it’s been years since I’ve watched one.
 
I agree with this so much, but I also wonder where MTV Europe would fit into a modern landscape with everything so readily available everywhere online anyway. The fun of MTV Europe for me, at least, was discovering stuff from other countries- Mylene Farmer, Eros Ramazotti, Ace of Base- none of my love would have happened without MTV Europe.

The other issue for me was just that MTV relied so heavily on reality stuff. I never understood how Music Television didn’t play music. It led me to other channels.

Though presumably music TV itself as a concept is dead? I have zero idea whether there are any music channels left- it’s been years since I’ve watched one.
They do exist in hotel rooms and barber shops.
 
90s MTV was fucking glorious. First time as a teenager there was appointment viewing not on terrestrial.

I squarely blame the decline of MTV Europe as a unifying force for Brexit, Trump, Covid, Putin.
 
I watched Krampus (2015) on MTV last night. Kind of odd they never successfully moved onto a video streaming platform - I had always wanted to make my own video playlists back in the day when I'd wait for gems to get aired on MTV2 before nu-metal took over the channel. Their own fault not responding to viewing habits and their terrible awards show with the stage school claque of models and dancers was nauseating in the end.
 
Did MTV Europe at least show regional advertising? Must have been a hard pitch to advertisers.

Never thought of it until TRIE highlighted it but getting record companies to pay for your content was quite the business model.
 
90s cable was amazing. Paramount Comedy, MTV and the Simpsons. Just enough, but not too much.
 
I can't describe the excitement of getting cable TV installed in the early 90s.
 
Did MTV Europe at least show regional advertising? Must have been a hard pitch to advertisers.

Never thought of it until TRIE highlighted it but getting record companies to pay for your content was quite the business model.
I remember German adverts being a thing.

Most Wanted was amazing. The Real World too (although that was probably the start of MTV showing reality programming rather than music…..)
 
Is VH1 still going? I imagine the figures are scraping zero
 
Did MTV Europe at least show regional advertising? Must have been a hard pitch to advertisers.

Never thought of it until TRIE highlighted it but getting record companies to pay for your content was quite the business model.

Yea the advertising was entirely regional. MTV Europe was just a brand and a biz corp as far as I can tell, when you worked at MTV you worked for a specific territory. They had offices in most major regions and the ads in the UK were specifically for the UK. In fact they were sharing ads in territory - MTV ad space was sold in bundle as Viacom, so they’d also be shown on VH1, Paramount, E!, later the CBS channels and so on, and even Nickelodeon where appropriate. The channel bundles would differ by territory too, for example TMF was massive in Holland, even bigger than MTV I think, so things were different per territory. Also back then, movies and albums and TV shows weren’t released in unison, they were staggered, so all the advertising and promos and trailers and partnerships couldn’t go out simultaneously. A very different time.
 
Yea the advertising was entirely regional. MTV Europe was just a brand and a biz corp as far as I can tell, when you worked at MTV you worked for a specific territory. They had offices in most major regions and the ads in the UK were specifically for the UK. In fact they were sharing ads in territory - MTV ad space was sold in bundle as Viacom, so they’d also be shown on VH1, Paramount, E!, later the CBS channels and so on, and even Nickelodeon where appropriate. The channel bundles would differ by territory too, for example TMF was massive in Holland, even bigger than MTV I think, so things were different per territory. Also back then, movies and albums and TV shows weren’t released in unison, they were staggered, so all the advertising and promos and trailers and partnerships couldn’t go out simultaneously. A very different time.

That cannot have been the case in the early days. I distinctly remember, like Eurosport, loads of random ads with heavily German accented men selling shit watches with meaningless slogans like, “feel the power”.

By the time you were working there, I’d moved on, so probably did change, but I also can’t imagine the tech was that easy in the early, satellite driven days of MTV Europe.
 
Yeah I imagine that’s true. I remember those early Sky channels too.

Ah the days of waiting for your parents to go to bed so you could search the 200 foreign channels for some German smut :disco:
 

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