MTV (2010-present)

MTV (2010-present)
"We want our MTV back"
Running Time: TBA Country: United States Release Date: August 1, 1981; 43 years ago Created by: Chris McCarthy Distributed by: Paramount Global

MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American pay television channel officially launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a division of Paramount Global. While it was good from the 80s to 2000s, the channel has severely gone downhill since 2010 when they removed the brand "Music Television" and in 2011 when they started to air Ridiculousness every single day, without focusing on music videos or other shows.

Why They Have Gone Ridiculous

1. Since 2010, they have removed the "Music Television" brand despite the channel being about music.
2. Elephant in the Room: Ever since Ridiculousness premiered in 2011, the show started to occupy every single airing schedule on the list without showing any music videos or other shows such as: the Jackass series, Beavis and Butthead and it's spin-off Daria, Clone High, Punk'd, etc., all of which are actually good.
3. They have shown no more interest in music videos and airing other shows ever since Ridiculousness became popular.
4. Besides Ridiculousness, they have a whole bunch of other slew of bad to mediocre shows such as:
   • I Just Want My Pants Back
   • Mary + Jane
   • The Inbetweeners (2012) (which is a bad American remake of the classic British 2008 sitcom)
   • Teen Mom
   • Good Vibes
   • My Life as Liz
   • 16 and Pregnant
   • Parental Control
   • Friendzone
   • I Used to Be Fat
   • Clone High (season 2)
   • Ren & Stimpy (2024)
     • Not to mention that half of these shows are literal shows about TEEN PREGNANCY.
5. Not only they no longer care about music but the network even made fun of the brand with the tagline: "MTV: We Don't Play Music", despite the M from the network's name which stands for Music.
6. Two terrible words that makes you frustrated: "Nostalgia pandering": MTV heavily relied MUCH on NOSTALGIA, especially the 80s moments of MTV, mostly the iconic "Moon man" ident, etc on 80s things.
   • And what it makes even more worse that, their another cable channel, HBO, which greatly never relied on nostalgia pandering in the 80s, especially the iconic "HBO in Space" ident. Except for the one thing at 2017 Feature Presentation ident at HBO, that minorly had one nostalgia pandering moment
7. It barely did anything to celebrate it's 40th anniversary in 2021, no music videos, no airing older shows, nothing, except for, you guessed it, airing a 24/7 all-day marathon of Ridiculousness.
8. This era ruined MTV's reputation once and for all and has shown no signs of returning.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The channel was good before 2010.
2. Their 2021 logo is nice as it greatly reassembles the 1981 logo.
3. They do still have some good shows and movies like:
   • Catfish: The TV Show
   • Scream (TV series)
   • Beavis and Butt-Head (season 8)
   • Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
   • Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head
   • Faking It
   • Awkward
   • Finding Carter
   • Teen Wolf (TV series)
   • The Challenge
   • Fear Factor (2017)
   • Clone High (season 3)
4. Since mid-2022, they have been slightly getting better as they toned down the Ridiculousness schedule by adding some Catfish reruns, fixing their logo in 2021 (as mentioned above), the launch of MTV 80s and the return of the MTV Music Awards, but that's still not enough to fully recover from their downfall, only time will tell if MTV will go back to being great like Disney Channel did.
5. Their sister channel, VH1, was still good for a while.

Reception

MTV received major criticism in the 2010s and 2020s for their focus on reality shows, as well as their decision to create shows that focused on underage pregnancy (16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom and the spin-offs of the latter show). Many critics have stated that teenage pregnancy is a serious issue and shouldn't be shown on television. Some audiences have also felt that the girls' partners were abusive offenders who exploited them for money.

In addition to the aforementioned reality shows (which have also been widely criticized), MTV has also been criticized for having churned out mass amounts of pop and radio-friendly rock music from its inception in 1981 to 2009. Backlash against the network, however, only began to see its peak in the 2010s–with music-related content being completely dropped and the network wiping its "Music Television" branding. Today, the main MTV network only plays music during special occasions like the Video Music Awards (and as of October 22, 2023, Fresh Out Playlist to fulfill contracts with its providers requiring music programming).

The network's reception would only get worse in 2024, when Paramount Global announced they would be shutting down MTV News. This tactic is known as wiping, with which thousands of music and culture history archives from the past decades were deleted forever.

Trivia

• MTV did not have a regular video block for a period that spanned from the 2014 end of MTV First to the 2019 premiere of the short-lived TRL Top 10. During this time, videos were only seen during commercial breaks and video premieres (from 2014 to 2016), along with special occasions; for instance, the death of Prince in April 2016 saw MTV pre-empt its afternoon programming to devote several hours worth of airtime to playing his videos.
• Sister channel MTV2 used to play only a few hours of music a day in the early morning hours, but eventually dropped its video blocks in November 2017.

References

1. ↑ HBO is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

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