...MTV

Someone has a birthday... I wonder who? It is MTV's 30th birthday and my oh my has it changed. There are rarely any music videos played on the channel, unless you are up from 3AM-7AM. They launched and created something amazing, all music, all of the time, but eventually that went away. Why? It is expensive to run a channel without ads or sponsorship with just a single mindset, ask Speed.

(The moon-landing promo ran roughly 75,000 times on MTV, including 17,000 plays in MTV's inaugural year.)


I remember watching shows like Beavis & Butt-head and Daria and watching their Spring Breaks when they were way better than they are today, but they also used to be in Florida when Florida was okay with that. Even when they moved to Mexico it was not so bad for the 1st couple of years. At midnight August 1st, on the exact 30th anniversary of MTV's first broadcast, VH1 Classic will replay MTV's entire first hour of footage from 1981. The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first video MTV ever played, but can anyone name the second? Maybe int he next 10, 20, 30 or so years MTV will add music back into their programming. I doubt it, but it could be a nostalgic thing, like TV Land or Nick at Nite. Still I am impressed with the longevity and revenue MTV pulls in and for that alone I am going to give MTV 2 Digits Up.