On December 31, 2025, MTV permanently shut down its television channels. The closure of MTV’s linear channels goes far beyond a simple business decision. It marks the end of one of the most influential brands in the history of television and contemporary popular culture. To understand why this moment is so significant, it is worth looking back and reflecting on what MTV was, what it represented, and why, as we knew it, it no longer made sense.
MTV was launched on August 1, 1981, in the United States, with an idea as simple as it was revolutionary: to broadcast music videos 24 hours a day. Its first video was Video Killed the Radio Star, a choice that proved almost prophetic.
At a time when music television was marginal and music was consumed mainly on the radio or in physical formats, MTV recognized before anyone else that visuals would become a central element of the music business. It wasn’t just about listening to songs—it was about seeing them, building identity, aesthetics, and narratives around the artists.
MTV wasn’t born as just another channel; it was a direct response to a new generation that wanted to see themselves reflected on screen.
For those who grew up with streaming platforms and social media, it may be hard to imagine, but for years MTV was the world’s leading tastemaker in music.
It was a linear television channel that:
MTV didn’t just show music—it built culture. It decided what was played, what was trendy, what was “cool,” and what wasn’t.
Between the 1980s and 1990s (and into the early 2000s), MTV experienced its golden era. For millions of young people around the world, watching MTV was a daily ritual.
The channel played a key role in:
But its true value went beyond content. MTV represented belonging to a community—sharing codes, musical tastes, visual references, and a sense of generational identity. Watching MTV was a way of saying, “I’m part of this.”
Few media brands have ever achieved that level of emotional and cultural connection.
For decades, appearing on MTV could change a career overnight.
A music video in heavy rotation meant:
For years, MTV was the main marketing engine of the music industry. Record labels invested huge budgets in music videos because they knew MTV was the window to the world.
Without MTV, the concept of the music video as a central piece of the music business probably would never have reached the scale it did.
The closure of MTV as a linear channel reflects a clear market reality:
MTV does not disappear as a brand, but its original format no longer fits in an ecosystem dominated by platforms, data, and personalized consumption.
It’s not just the closure of a channel—it’s the end of an era.
MTV did not fail. MTV fulfilled its mission—and exceeded it. It changed television, transformed the music industry, and defined generations.
Its closure is not a defeat, but the logical consequence of having been born for a world that no longer exists—a world in which television was the center of youth culture.
Today, that center is fragmented. But MTV’s DNA lives on in every music video, in every artist who carefully crafts their image, and in every platform that understands that music is meant to be seen as well as heard.
Because, in the end, MTV didn’t die last year. MTV began turning into legend long ago, at the very moment it stopped being just a channel and became a shared memory. And that legend will continue to accompany the generations who grew up captivated by its broadcasts—when music, visuals, and the feeling of being connected to the world fit on a screen and forever shaped a way of living and feeling.
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