♫ The Internet Killed the Video Star ♫
Posted by MichaelGroff on August 1, 2018 | Filed under Podcasts, Uncategorized
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37 years ago today, MTV (Music Televsion) signed on the air.
It was 1981 and the landscape of music was quickly changing, disco was out, new-wave/synth music, hair bands and power ballads were coming in and the new visual medium looked to dethrown the increasingly obsolete audio realm known as radio. So the very first video to air on MTV seemed only fitting that it would be “Video Killed the Radio Star” a song composed by Geoffrey Downes, Trevor Horn, Woolley in 1978 and released under the band name of “The Buggles” from their debut album “The Age of Plastic”.
The song, as iconic as it was for MTV’s launch, was never a chart-busting hit in the United States, reaching number 40 on Billboard in December of 1979. The Buggles experienced somewhat more success in the UK, but MTV saw the track as the perfect way to begin it’s U.S. launch on August 1st, 1981.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, MTV grew to be a monster—music videos were as important, if not more so, to a song’s success than the lyrics and guitar solos. Deeper into the ’90s, MTV became more involved in original programming, some of which was centered around music (or at least roughly so), while other shows had nothing to do with music at all. Along came the explosion of another new medium during that time… the internet.
With the increasing dominance of satellite TV, the internet and MP3 players, MTV was losing it’s foothold on music culture as the millennium turned, so they decided to focus far less on music videos and continue to roll out original programming, but even this was becoming muffled by the sheer preponderance of new shows and content hitting consumers every day. In the mid 2000s, social media and video sharing sites like myspace, facebook, youtube and others were growing rapidly and MTV found itself as just one of thousands of options.
Fast forward to 2018 and the era of music videos on MTV has all but ended, it’s much easier to watch a music video online than it is to wait hours to see it on MTV—if they even play videos at all, which is rare.
In retrospect, the Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the most ironic possible choice for MTV as they are now the media outlet that has been made obsolete by something much better.