More:<\/p>\n
A brief history of MTV IDs and the impact they\u2019ve had on the creative world<\/a> [Ayla Angelos<\/a> at itsnicethat]<\/p>\n But it was also a commercial platform for the industry from the start. By the 90s, MTV and VH1 had already begun a shift to more reality TV programming \u2014 arguably one of the planks that laid the groundwork for the takeover of the current US President, turning the USA into some kind of reality television nightmare. And that meant squeezing out all those music videos and creative use of the medium. Freaking out about this in 2026 is a bit odd, as your time machine setting to go Marty McFly on an MTV exec would be 1992:<\/p>\n In 1992 of This Month, MTV Made a Controversial Shift Away From Music Videos With the First Episode of \u2018The Real World\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Now, the current situation with MTV has been exaggerated online, but it\u2019s not wrong. \u201cMTV\u201d is not shutting down, and it does seem you\u2019ll still be able to tune into music videos. But MTV, like all major media properties, now faces the same corporate finance juggernaut that\u2019s killing off joy and freedom everywhere. And the news on this broke months ago.<\/p>\n The Borg, uh, sorry, \u201cParamount Skydance,\u201d announced that cost-cutting measures would mean switching off MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live in the UK and Ireland. Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil will also see cuts of some music-only channels. Separately, they also announced they were axing the MTV Europe Music Awards and MTV Latin America\u2019s MIAW Awards.<\/p>\n From October in Euronews, around the announcement:<\/p>\n The end of an era: MTV music channels to be switched off across Europe by end of 2025<\/a> [Euronews]<\/p>\n And on New Year\u2019s Eve, Rolling Stone did a good write-up, in contrast to a lot of the misinformation and AI slop about this online:<\/p>\n MTV\u2019s Music-Only Channels Are Officially Going Dark<\/a><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the irony. The fact that the news that \u201cMTV is shutting down\u201d went viral, including in the USA where \u2014 for now, anyway \u2014 the music-only channels are still on, indicates that many people aren\u2019t watching. (Hence there wasn\u2019t a chorus of \u201cwhat are you talking about? I\u2019m tuned into MTV Music on my cable box right now!\u201c) Much as I\u2019m inclined to gripe here about Paramount Skydance and its political spinelessness and corporate greed<\/a>, here you do get the sense that MTV\u2019s music videos are the victim of the internet, and especially Google\u2019s YouTube.<\/p>\n But maybe there\u2019s some hope there. Wish you could watch 33,000+ music videos on shuffle? Choose by decade \u2014 the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, even the 2020s and a decade before MTV existed, the 1970s. Try Headbangers\u2019 Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, and Club MTV. Or shuffle all of them.<\/p>\n Meet MTV Rewind, the creation of FlexasaurusRex<\/a>.<\/p>\n MTV Rewind<\/a><\/p>\n Update: You can save videos! Click the logo. <\/p>\n Oddly, the results are anti-algorithmic, even in contrast to MTV\u2019s actual programming. The selection isn\u2019t random, but once you hit play, you are in full shuffle mode. That means you might discover things you didn\u2019t. How it works: that\u2019s thanks to\u00a0IMVDb<\/a>, The Internet Music Video Database, and you\u2019ll see it pulls from YouTube. It says \u201cno ads,\u201d but you do get an occasional retro ad for your amusement.<\/p>\n Suddenly, just to literally needle drop what hits first, I\u2019m getting Serge Gainsbourg for our present decade:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And A Tribe Called Quest in the 90s:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And U-MV091 (corn dogs, anyone?):<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Or I\u2019m in the 2000s with The Distillers, and the writing is on the wall \u2014 that Yahoo! logo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You know, this site pitches itself as nostalgia, but this isn\u2019t just nostalgia I\u2019m feeling. This is remembering a time that was genuinely freer, for all the evils of the industry. Contrast the imaginative music and visuals to the sad, depressing dreck you get pitched by default on Spotify (and to be fair, all the streaming services). Nostalgia is \u201cI love this song from when I was a teenager jamming to this in the car.\u201d This is more, \u201cI miss the days before The Event and the appearance of all these body doubles, back when I could leave my house without a sawed-off shotgun hunting for food.\u201d <\/p>\n Call it a pre-apocalyptic cultural landscape.<\/p>\n I mean, MTV was many things, but it didn\u2019t launch by shilling for Ronald Reagan, apart from being a major NASA nerd from day one. And it did play actual music television, until gradually it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to sound too bleak. This implies that people aren\u2019t still making fantastic music and imagining amazing music videos, except \u2014 they are, in greater numbers than ever, in more places than ever.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a beautiful world out there, if we\u2019ll just get unglued from our screens. Streaming killed the video star. Let\u2019s make them stars again. Or if you\u2019re in the mood to be glued to your screen, cue up MTV REWIND and enjoy. (And maybe buy the dev a coffee \u2014 especially just in case some lawyer shows up!)<\/p>\n https:\/\/wantmymtv.vercel.app<\/a><\/p>\n And never, ever say the problem with our current moment is \u201cthere\u2019s too much music\u201d or \u201cthe barrier to entry is too easy\u201d or \u201cFinal Cut is a thing that exists.\u201d (Yeah, uh, hello, April 1999.)<\/p>\n The problem is too much corporate consolidation and finance. <\/p>\n And unless we resist, the problem is us. <\/p>\n I still want my MTV; gonna hit shuffle again. And I get this. Perfect.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And I\u2019ll probably write more about this, but you should also go read this right now (maybe with MTV playing in the background):<\/p>\n Why I Quit Streaming And Got Back Into Cassettes<\/a> \u2013 the inimitable Janus Rose for 404media<\/p>\n I want my Fedi TV<\/p>\n Get your money for nothing and your vids for free. The Fediverse has its own answer to this:<\/p>\n The Indie Beat Television<\/a><\/p>\n Just flipping it on, the quality is fantastic. You\u2019ll get some cartoons, even, mixed in with the music and music videos, but who doesn\u2019t want that? <\/p>\n Notably, this also comes with an open submission policy for TV and radio \u2014 it\u2019s an online spiritual successor to public access television in the USA<\/a>, which deserves its own write-up. You don\u2019t get the feeling of open mic night; it feels more like great college radio, in the way that college radio doesn\u2019t even exist anymore, crossed with a great short film festival screening.<\/p>\n The best bits of MTV \u2014 even the ones that were ultimately most influential \u2014 were oddly enough the experimental ones. But they were a tiny fraction of the programming; a lot was crammed into the network idents. Here, you get to mainline just that goodness.<\/p>\n Watch it for ten minutes and tell me again that you need to make your music video with genAI. I\u2019m just watching a punk band with handmade, real-for-real animation of all sorts (even some toy cars). That\u2019s \u201cShakeytown\u201d by Brisbane\u2019s i heart hiroshima<\/a>.<\/p>\n https:\/\/robertafidora.com\/animation-array#playlist<\/a><\/p>\n \t Tags: 2000s<\/a>, 2010s<\/a>, 2020s<\/a>, 70s<\/a>, 80s<\/a>, 90s<\/a>, artists<\/a>, history<\/a>, I want my MTV<\/a>, inspiration<\/a>, media archaeology<\/a>, MTV<\/a>, music<\/a>, music videos<\/a>, nostalgia<\/a>, reality TV<\/a>, retro<\/a>, Space Shuttle<\/a>, streaming<\/a>, television<\/a>, video<\/a>, youtube<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No, MTV is not shutting down, though Paramount Skydance did shutter some all-music video channels in various markets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-359334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/mtv-rewind-1024x755.jpg\")
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