the cable television network.
August 1, 1981 marks the sport of the popular music television show that although has since, lent itself to many things other than the music that birthed and bred it, is still going on and strong.
It may very well be true the video killed the radio star as, MTV had a way of making the trite true: music being universal.
No matter the genre, every video played was your “favorite video.”
Fast forward, life and music has changed.
And with the invent of instant gratification and instant saturation being the name of the game now, MTV and its sister (VH1/Video Hits 1) have completely done the same in trying to stay current with the currents, sadly.
Sadly, INTERNET KILLED THE VIDEO STAR—and MTV dug the knife in further.
“Killed” it meaning, videos were the inspiration for music artists to want to bring the life of their lyrics and production to digi-short. Michael Jackson broke ground with the half hour short video for “Thriller” that brought a whole new perspective and importance of bringing music to video. But when MTV (and esp VH1) started playing with the Internet and trying to hang with it, they dropped the ball on video. Now music artists are thrown in a slush pile of the fan (who now, is a “star” themselves-online) who only cares about their videos for about 15 minutes to 24 hours through the life of a hashtag and reward of a retweet to re-up for their own popularity and online ‘celebrity.’ After that…no one cares.
Thanks to You Tube and the ability to upload via social media accounts, Internet became much bigger than MTV and MTV let it and assisted it-almost by default.
Business is one thing, but artistry and creativity is another.
Unfortunately, the only way music especially (and all other artistry: books, movies etc.) are going to be able to beat the Internet is via INTRANET and CONSOLIDATION–like the model I patented and designed here. Until music and all of media pulls together and pulls a “Prince” (pull all its stuff off the Internet and build a platform that forces the fan, and the Internet to come to IT, it all artists will forever be a slave to dropping ‘new videos” and trailers down their timeline, and rewarding fans for retweeting through to 24 hour oblivion while screaming “I’m #1 on iTunes!”
I know, right? Great, big, grand, costly gesture but then so is the Internet, right? It aint gon’ come easy and it aint gon’ come cheap. But one thing the Internet is gon’ do is remain forever. Music as we knew it-won’t survive it. So, to beat it, it’s going to take a consolidation to conquer it. Until that consolidation and its own Internet (for all media only) is secured, Apple, the fan, and the Internet will own all artists-up to and including how or if they are inspired (or can afford to) to create.
I maintain my stance that MTV and VH1 let music down when the Internet and reality television and such came into view but we hear there iss good news.
Although they don’t do music like they used to, it’s being reported they will be resorted back to their roots (somewhat) by revamping a music television program on the channel that plays all the music and videos from after the era that made it what it is today.
Hey…it’s a start.
Brought to you by our sister site, tap in for more on MTV’s birthday here, and here, for some fun facts on some of MTV’s original don da-das don-va-jas:
Spitfire .
Media Maestro .
Writing Rhinoceros .
