It has been noted that MTV recently celebrated its 42nd anniversary, with the legendary music channel airing for the first time ever on August 1st, 1981, and going on to revolutionize the music industry.
The channel saw bigger emphasis on music videos in constant rotation represented a shift in focus from radio to television, and was responsible for kicking off the career of many artists in the ’80s and ’90s.
However, since the turn of the century, MTV gradually put a bigger emphasis on reality tv and original programming, leaving music videos to its alternative channels like MTV2.
This change received mixed reaction from the music fans even before the advent of streaming and social media, which once more completely changed the way music is consumed.
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash recently shared a post to remark on the channel’s anniversary, but not without a fair share of criticism. Changing MTV’s iconic logo to WTF: Happened to Music, the post was captioned:
“We just celebrated 42 years of MTV. But honestly, the MTV we grew up with, died in the ’90s. Mtv should have always been about music videos. They should have used Mtv2 as the channel to air only shows. So if you wanted your shows, jump over to Mtv2 cuz Mtv only has music videos! Hell it’s in the name, Music Television….”
Slash ended his statement by referencing the first-ever music video aired on MTV, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles.
