I had fun this week making co workers feel old with the celebration of MTV's 25th year on the air. Click here to watch this week's What's Bugging You package. (The news story changes after 5:00pm on August 8th - so hurry! This link updates every Tuesday.)
When the music station launched August 1, 1981, neither Prince WIlliam nor Brittany Spears was born yet. Madonna was only 23 that year. That's one year younger than Brittany is now. At 25, MTV is even olden than its current target audience of 12 to 24. So, say the average viewer is 18. He or she was eleven on the first day of Y2K and only four years old when former President Bill Clinton was inaugurated. See how old you are compared to them by clicking here.
So it's no wonder why MTV didn't make a huge deal of its birthday milestone. Does its target audience care? Does an 18-year-old want to sit around and watch something his parents watched? MTV did put up an MTV 25 bug on the screen, and in between its regulary scheduled reality shows hosted a countdown featuring a video from each year. You can watch them online. Actually VH1 Classic aired MTV's first 24 hours of programming all day Tuesday.
The people I spoke with who remember watching MTV in its beginning years say they're frustrated because every time they turn on MTV they find reality shows instead of videos. MTV launched MTV 2, which you would think would be the place to turn to for videos, but that wasn't the case when I tried it Tuesday. Some high school reality show was on. Luckily for music lovers, there are other music channel choices. ( Hey- growing up I didn't have cable and had to rely on Friday Night Videos to stay in the know.)
Here is something that 18-year-old might have trouble believing. We didn't have email when MTV went on the air. Not for what, another ten years?
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