On December 31 2025, MTV’s 24-hour music channels in the UK went dark.
45 years on from its launch year in 1981, when The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio star kicked-off a paradigm pop-culture shift for the ages, Music TeleVision had basically breathed its final beat.
Before culture moved at the lightning speed of a combustion engine, as it does today, it used to take its pretty time: embedding itself over a slow-burn period of weeks and months, because frankly, getting direct access to those influences took a lot of time, effort and dedication. At the very least, a walk to the record store, the newsagent (for the magazines with the free CDs on the front), or a trip to Blockbuster on a Friday night, to whet your movie appetite. You had to be dedicated and choose your influences. It takes me back to the days of crafting a mixtape on cassette for your best mate – a labour of love that could take days, as opposed to the Spotify playlist, that you can likely knock out between synergist bookings.
As for new music, it would sometimes feel like stumbling across your own special secret. You’d hear a song on the radio, imagine the person behind it, then maybe - if you were lucky - catch a glimpse on late-night TV or Top of the Pops. Otherwise, the visuals would manifest from album sleeves, magazine spreads, or your own imagination. But then MTV arrived, exploded on the scene, and showed – for the first time - how video can change the world.
‘Do you know what it means when there’s no TV Mike?
No MTV!’
(The Lost Boys)
MTV quickly became the cultural tastemaker: breaking artists, defining fashion, shaping behaviours. Suddenly, sound had posture. Style had motion. Attitude came with its own camera angle. And every big soundtrack now had its own little ‘film’.
And all this took roughly three minutes. It was a bit like a slowed down version of doomscrolling, but 40 years before it had a name and took your attention span down to about 30 seconds. Talking of which, do I still have your attention?
You see, MTV understood the truth before the rest of us caught up: sell your product with a story, build a little world around it, and it becomes an event. Our minds were blown.
My parents were way too tight to pay for cable TV in the 90s, so I’d ask friends to tape stuff off MTV. It was like getting your hands on gold, wrapped in a Scotch VHS sleeve. And in between the forgettable bits and pieces, you’d find the truly iconic and sometimes life changing.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller wasn’t just a hit single.
It was a full-blown headline feature that elevated the medium of video to something grand and cinematic.
Madonna didn’t just release iconic pop videos.
She cultivated a brand image that hooked and provoked and blazed a fashion trail. Come on, vogue.
A few years later, Nirvana didn’t just do rebellion with Smells Like Teen Spirit.
They captured it on camera, and really meant it. The video propelled a single that was doing well on the airwaves, to a mass global audience who dug the attitude, the riffs, and the story.
Meanwhile, hip-hop found its aesthetic language, and pop learned about the power of spectacle and excess, on film. By the late 90s, Britney Spears’ Hit me baby one more time was arguably more about the video than the song.
And we all watched, transfixed. Influenced. Inspired to change a little bit of our humble selves, and wear those fashion influences literally on our sleeve. Personally, I was more into plaid grunge shirts than conical bras, but there was something for everyone.
The music video revolution was working in tandem with a home video rental revolution, to make video the holy grail for the culture vultures. So, whether it was renting out Ghostbusters on VHS, or being the first to catch Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain vid on MTV, this was where the pop culture stakes were really at. Video had a lot to answer for, and in a pretty good way.
As a format, it took on a life of its own. The 80s was a time when new tech, like the Walkman, then the CD player, then the video camera, was your way of hooking into your own imagination, long before the internet became a giant portal for it. And when you compare similar (pioneering) timelines - stand up, our Group CEO Dale Parmenter, with his Sony M3 videotape camera whopper, half the size of his garden shed. He saw the power of video early on too. Early 1980s – the world’s your oyster, and you can shoot the sh*t out of pretty much anything! (whether that be Bewdley bypasses, or a Beastie Boys vid).
We digress. MTV was one of the reasons filmmaking got a little bit closer to home, out from the big studios and into the realms of the independent directors, and ultimately into our living rooms. It was all about the style, and all about pushing boundaries: irreverent cuts, bold colours and overlays, handheld camerawork, gritty backdrops, a little bit rough around the edges sometimes, but real and alive.
Editing techniques may have evolved significantly in the last few decades, but the template to create something exciting, contemporary and dynamic, was being shown 24-7 on your music channel. And long before TikTok and Reels, MTV understood that impact wasn’t about duration. It was about getting your attention in as short a time as possible.
As the 90s tipped into the 2000s, something drastic changed. The internet.
With music availability becoming fully digital and readily accessible through platforms like Napster and your MP3 players, MTV played a curveball and moved from music mythology – to the lure of the reality show and celebrity excess. Suddenly the curtain was pulled back: The Osbournes, Jersey Shore, The Hills, Cribs. Meanwhile, Jackass and later, Catfish, showed how handheld, home-movie techniques, could transcend through to prime-time television, provided the subject was fun and shareable (in a ‘did you see that!’ kinda way). The likes of Spike Jonze and Johnny Knoxville, also helped pave the way for the ‘content creator’, artistically driving the entire show without a stuffy producer in a tie calling the shots.
Who would have thought back then, that ‘DIY’ video would become our biggest, scrolling pastime? Music was taking a firm backseat, and metaphorically speaking, Guns N’ Roses was losing its battle with Geordie Shore.
MTV’s programming would mirror exactly where consumable video content was heading. Onto smaller screens, applications and, of course, YouTube. I found it interesting recently talking to a friend of mine at work, a millennial, who said that most nights he would choose YouTube as his go-to ‘viewing platform’. Not Netflix, not Apple TV, and definitely not terrestrial. YouTube. The platform, that to this generation, is arguably what MTV was to the generation before – the channel for cultural taste-making.
MTV didn’t simply broadcast music videos. It taught an entire generation how to consume pop culture - and in doing so, it changed the rules of visual storytelling forever. What went wrong? Pure and simple, the internet. Why wait patiently for a VJ to play your favourite video, when you can just type it in the search bar on YouTube. That whole concept, to my teenage self, would have blown my mind. It’s now, so easy. Everything, everywhere, all at once. You don’t have to pick a side anymore: rocker or raver, mainstream or alternative, hip hop or soul, synth-pop or K-pop. You can have it all, on a playlist. In 60 seconds flat.
Let’s not kid ourselves - MTV was a gamechanger.
It made stars out of nobodies, gave alternative scenes a spotlight, and turned potential fashion disasters into huge trends. Its 24-hour format also created that special thing that we don’t have today – where the steady anticipation (to your favourite song or artist), sharpened the experience, and made the pay-off sweeter. It was worth the wait.
And then it hit me: the sweet irony of that first – and last – track that MTV ever played, Video Killed the Radio Star. I mean, The Buggles were right. If you didn’t jump on board with video in the 80s, you were left behind; and being just a sound on the radio wasn’t enough. The fact was though, video made you a star, more than anything else before or since. It’s just that Internet Killed the MTV.
Cut to 2026, and we stand now in a world of transient mixed media, where every channel and every bit of visual content really matters if you want to be truly successful. But there’s certainly a lesson to be learnt, for filmmakers and perhaps our clients - about the rise and fall of MTV. I just have the fuzzy-eyed instinct, that for all the scrolling, for all the lifetime of images before breakfast, and for the thousands of stories in our pocket, we should never forget that the real magic shows up when you stop running past it.