Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video, screened on MTV, had global impact
MTV kick-started a new era of music and pop culture in 1981, when it went on air for the first time, emblematically playing “Video Killed the Radio Star” as its debut music video.
More than four decades later, the channel, now owned by US media giant Paramount Skydance, will wind down its international music broadcasting by the end of the year as it struggles to compete with online streaming and social media.
MTV Music, MTV Hits and its 80s and 90s music shows will be shut down in the UK and other European countries in the coming months, sources at Paramount confirmed to AFP.
These music channels will stop broadcasting at the end of the year in France, Germany, Poland, Australia and Brazil as well, according to various media reports.
It has been declared the “end of an era” by dismayed fans and former MTV video jockeys — the beloved music presenters known as VJs who appeared on millions of screens at the the height of the network’s popularity.
However, the conditions that made MTV “revolutionary” simply “don’t exist anymore”, said Kirsty Fairclough, a professor of screen studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The rise of digital streaming platforms like YouTube and TikTok has “completely refigured how we engage with music and images”, the researcher on popular culture told AFP.
Viewers or listeners now expect “immediacy” and “interactivity” that sitting in front of the television to watch rolling music videos cannot provide, she added.
James Hyman, who directed and produced MTV Europe’s dance music shows in the 1990s, agrees the network thrived before the internet was ubiquitous.
“It was so exciting, because that’s mainly all people had,” Hyman told AFP.
– ‘Experimentation’ –
Hyman was at the heart of MTV’s Party Zone — which celebrated dance and club culture and played up-and-coming techno, house and trance music — alongside MTV VJ Simone Angel.
Both of them left the network when MTV Europe split up into regional subsidiaries and pivoted from music programming to reality shows in the early 2000s.
“I was heartbroken when it started to split up into different regions. To me that was like the beginning of the end,” Dutch presenter Angel told AFP.
According to British audience researcher Barb, MTV Music reached around 1.3 million UK households in July 2025.
In comparison, Barb figures reported in 2001 showed MTV UK and Ireland’s package of music channels had reached over 10 million homes.
For Angel, MTV’s slow decline in popularity can be traced back to its move away from original, edgy music content key to helping smaller artists break out.
“Initially MTV Europe wasn’t just about making the most amount of money… that sense of experimentation made the channel very exciting,” said the former VJ.
Paramount has taken several cost-cutting measures since its merger with Skydance earlier this year, announcing 1,000 job cuts last month and reviewing its other cable television offerings.
Some MTV music channels will stay on air in the United States, and the flagship MTV HD channel will be available in the UK, but with a focus on entertainment rather than music.
“The ‘M’ stood for music, and that’s gone,” lamented Hyman, who has carefully stored VHS tapes of the shows he produced for Party Zone.
The tapes whir in Hyman’s VHS player at his home in London, playing clips from the 90s: intimate interviews with The Prodigy and Aphex Twin, funky, experimental music videos, and wild hairstyles.
– ‘Seismic’ influence –
The impact of MTV and MTV Europe was “seismic” in its heyday, said Fairclough, bringing both famous and up-and-coming artists into the homes of music fans around the world.
“It definitely marks the end of an era in how music is experienced, both visually and culturally, because MTV really fundamentally reshaped popular music,” she said.
Moments like the premiere of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” performance at the first MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in 1984 shaped the cultural conversation.
“MTV was so powerful it defined youth culture,” said Hyman, recalling its sweeping influence on fashion, film and music in Britain and Europe.
Ever since news broke that the music channels were facing the axe, Hyman and Angel have been urging Paramount to make archive tapes available to the public, insisting that people still want their MTV.
“To me it almost feels like MTV has been on life support for such a long time,” said Angel.
“But now that they’re actually threatening to pull the plug, we have all suddenly realised… this means too much to us.”
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