Early MTV

On December 31, 2025, a landmark moment in music and television history quietly unfolded: MTV’s dedicated 24-hour music video channels ended their broadcast run by playing the very same music video they debuted with 44 years earlier—The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

This poetic symmetry, beginning and ending with the same song, is more than a nostalgic shrug. It reflects the arc of MTV’s influence on music, media, and popular culture, while offering a symbolic close to the era of television as a primary gateway for music discovery, as I discussed yesterday.

A Revolution Begins: MTV’s 1981 Launch

When MTV (Music Television) went on the air at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, its format was radical: a channel devoted exclusively to music videos playing around the clock. The first video ever broadcast was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the British new wave band The Buggles.

The choice was as fitting as it was prophetic. Released in 1979 under Island Records, the song was itself a commentary on technological change in media—the rise of recorded music, video and digital production threatening the primacy of radio. Written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley, and propelled by its synth-pop sound, it topped charts in many countries and became synonymous with the dawn of a new musical era.

For MTV, the video was more than a catchy tune—it was an emblem. By placing a visual experience at the forefront of music consumption, MTV helped redefine how generations discovered artists, songs and styles.

MTV’s Golden Age: Cultural Force and Industry Shaper

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, MTV’s influence spread far beyond the small number of U.S. homes that could first receive its signal. Shows like Headbangers Ball, Yo! MTV Raps and 120 Minutes brought genres from indie to heavy metal to hip-hop into living rooms worldwide. Music videos became central to an artist’s identity and success.

The phrase “I want my MTV,” popularized in early marketing campaigns, became shorthand for youthful aspiration and cultural currency. The network propelled personalities such as Daisy Fuentes, Andy Dick and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds into stardom, and helped launch the careers of artists from Madonna to Nirvana.

MTV did more than broadcast music; it shaped how music was made. Record labels invested heavily in video production, and artists began approaching videos as art and narrative: from Michael Jackson’s cinematic Thriller to Peter Gabriel’s innovative visuals. These were not mere promotional tools—they were cultural events.

Shifting Tastes and the Digital Era

But the very forces that made MTV as indispensable in the 1980s, technology and shifting media consumption, also contributed to its decline as a music video destination. As cable expanded and then fragmented into dozens of channels, MTV began incorporating non-music programming like The Real World, Jersey Shore, and Ridiculousness as ratings drivers.

By the early 2000s, the rotation of music videos on MTV substantially diminished in the United States. Viewers found new ways to access music videos online through platforms like YouTube, Vevo, and later social media apps, eroding the unique value proposition that MTV once held.

MTV’s decision to shift toward reality and entertainment formats, while commercially sensible, signaled a transformation of its brand identity. Instead of music television, it became a hub for youth-oriented pop culture broadly defined.

2025: The Last Music Videos Go Dark

The decision in 2025 to discontinue MTV’s 24-hour music video channels (including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, and MTV Live) marks the end of an era. While the core MTV channel remains on the air in some regions, focusing on reality programming, the dedicated music video channels that once defined the brand’s global footprint went dark as of December 31, 2025.

In the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Australia and Brazil, MTV’s music video stations signed off in a series of final broadcasts that referenced the channel’s own history. Most poignantly, MTV Music’s final transmission featured “Video Killed the Radio Star”—the very track that launched MTV in 1981.

This choice was deeply symbolic. It acknowledged MTV’s roots while also recognizing a cultural moment in which traditional broadcast television has largely ceded music video discovery to the internet and mobile platforms. The channels’ sign-off was not a quiet disappearance into obscurity but a deliberate nod to the entire arc—from analogue radio and early cable to the digital screens of today.

Why This Matters Beyond Nostalgia

MTV’s lifecycle mirrors broader shifts in media: from centralized broadcasting to decentralized, on-demand digital networks. In its heyday, MTV was both a curator and creator of popular culture; it influenced fashion, language, and musical trends globally. The end of its music video channels underscores how much control over media audiences and creators now wield through algorithms and digital distribution.

Yet, the enduring relevance of “Video Killed the Radio Star” is telling. The song’s narrative, about innovation displacing older forms of media, remains the story of MTV itself. MTV didn’t just broadcast music videos; it embodied a shift in how people engage with music as a multisensory, visual, and social experience.

The song’s symbolic role at both MTV’s inception and sign-off offers a poignant bookend: a reminder that media landscapes evolve, often in ways that creators and audiences could hardly predict.

A Cultural Footprint That Endures

As MTV’s music video channels sign off forever, the network’s legacy lives on. It reshaped the music business, redefined television programming, and helped forge the visual vernacular of contemporary pop culture. Its final act—playing the same iconic music video that introduced the network in 1981—celebrates a remarkable 44-year journey.

In closing with “Video Killed the Radio Star,” MTV did not signal an end to music videos or visual creativity; rather, it acknowledged that the battleground for such creativity has moved. Music videos now thrive on digital platforms, created by artists and audiences alike. Yet the memory of MTV’s rise, and its graceful farewell, reminds us of a time when a single song could announce not just a broadcast, but a cultural revolution.

MTV pulling the plug on music video play feels less like a funeral and more like the end of a long, weird afterparty where the jukebox kept looping the same hits. This moment begs reflection, not because something pure just died, but because the illusion finally did. Music never belonged to the screen—it belonged to the noise, the sweat, the argument, the room. With the videos gone, maybe we’re forced back to the dangerous idea that songs have to stand on their own again. But that also means considering what we gained, what we lost, maybe what we never truly possessed.

For many Americans, like me, who came of age in the early 1980s, MTV was not something that simply arrived in their lives—it was something they discovered. That discovery often depended on geography, access to cable television, and a move away from home. For students who grew up in small towns, MTV could feel less like a TV channel and more like a portal to an entirely different cultural universe.

I graduated from high school in 1983 from a small town in West Central Minnesota, a place where musical discovery still relied heavily on local radio stations, record stores, and whatever happened to make its way into the school gym at dances. Cable television was limited, and MTV—still new, still experimental—was not part of everyday life. Music existed primarily as sound, not spectacle.

For me, that changed in college.

Encountering MTV for the first time was a sensory shock. Here was a channel that played nothing but music—all night, uninterrupted, from artists I had barely heard of to songs that sounded like they came from the future. I remember staying up all night watching it, unable to turn it off, as if sleep had suddenly become optional. Each video flowed into the next, creating a kind of visual mixtape that felt both intimate and overwhelming. It felt so cool.

What made MTV so powerful in that moment was not just the music, but the sense of connection. For students arriving on campus from rural or small-town America, MTV offered a crash course in youth culture, fashion, politics, and identity. British new wave bands, ska-influenced neo-soul, the sly, stylish new romantics, and later West Coast hip-hop artists and glam-metal performers all shared the same screen, collapsing distance and difference in ways that radio never could. You didn’t just hear the music—you saw how artists dressed, moved, and imagined themselves. The possibilities for musical identity felt endless, a perspective that now feels far too ‘pie in the sky Pollyannaesque’ optimism.

Those late-night viewing sessions were also communal. Dorm rooms became gathering spaces where people argued over favorite videos, discovered new bands together, and learned the visual language of a generation. MTV didn’t just reflect youth culture—it actively taught it, especially to those of us encountering it for the first time after leaving home.

Looking back, it is striking how formative those nights were. MTV functioned as an informal education in popular culture, one that filled gaps left by geography and access. For students from places like small-town Minnesota, it was a reminder that culture was bigger, louder, and more visually expressive than anything we had previously experienced.

That sense of discovery—of staying up all night because you couldn’t stop watching—is difficult to replicate in today’s algorithm-driven media environment. But for a generation that found MTV in college, those nights remain a vivid memory of what it felt like to stumble into a shared cultural moment and realize that the world was far larger than you had imagined.