The MTV Problem with Product Managment

The joke/trope about MTV not playing any music was alive and well when I finally got MTV around '98 or so when I was in high school. TRL was the show that was on when I got home from school. I remember when Eminem first was shown as a "hot" new video, then jumped to #1 on TRL. That's how influential the show was with their base (which was me I guess, sorta).

At first they would play a large chunk of the videos before cutting out, then as it kept getting more and more popular, less and less of the actual videos would play.

For example, they started inserting live "fans" talking about the video (e.g. I REQUESTED LIMP BIZKIT BECAUSE THEY ROCK TEEN SCREAM) which cut out the sound from the music video.

Then they started bringing in celebrities to hawk their latest album or movie, they'd spend about 20 seconds on the video, then cut to the celebrity for their reaction and then a question about their new video or new album or new product.

The producers of the show would also lick their lips whenever something "crazy" happened so they could repeat that clip over and over again in 5 different "music" clip shows and/or discuss it during the MTV MUSIC AWARDS. Example: Mariah Carey had her infamous breakdown on TRL and all they just played that clip of her non-stop. "MTV NEWS REPORTS MARIAH CAREY BREAKDOWN! YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!", "TOP 5 CELEBRITY MELTDOWNS That Happened on MTV"

Basically MTV the channel became a, "hey remember when this happened on MTV?" show. Less and less of their content was being driven by music videos since music videos make $0. Bringing in celebrities, having celebrities, reality shows that cost almost nothing to make (I'm surprised they didn't figure this out right off the bat with Real World). That's where the real money laid.

>MTV could have grown with the teenagers for the 1990s and now be a music channel for people in their 40s.

The "could have grown" isn't supported by evidence. The author appears to be unaware of economic realities:

  1) record labels wanted MTV to start pay royalties instead of historically getting music videos for free

  2) youtube didn't exist in 1981-2005 [1]

  3) music's general decline audience attention (video games, web surfing, etc) and discretionary spending ($$$ peaked in 1999)

[1] Why Doesn't MTV Play Music Videos Anymore? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ysyZF-DZFY

Globally the demise of MTV was even more obvious. During the music videos + beavis & butt-head years there globally was only one channel, which was awesome as you knew that the same thing was being watched by all other teens watching it around the world. Watching it felt like tuning in to a truly global teen culture, which resonated perfectly with the coming of the Internet that allowed you to communicate effortlessly with people around the world.

Then in the late 90s they had the bright idea to start splitting it off into smaller and smaller channels until all you had was a "your small local part of the world"-version of MTV, and the magic was gone.

> The move resulted in an increase in the channel's audience share of nearly 150%.

Not so much of a problem, it seems.

MTV also went through a time where we really changed the way we listened to music. With Youtube, Spotify and all the other similar services, anyone can watch the videos or listen to the music they want to. Their suggestions/radios are also very good at finding related music, so they have a become a good source to find new music.

All that makes the old MTV obsolete, IMO. Although you could say the same about all TV channels, even though they don't seem to be doing too bad.