The Golden Age Of MTV

For over thirty years MTV has been at the center for youth programing in television. MTV lunched on August 1, 1981 as a somewhat struggling network and has grown into one of the most influential brands of the world. MTV, now known for producing reality television, was created to be a twenty-four hour, seven days a week music video channel. In the 80’s radio dominated the music industry, and anyone who was someone fought to be herd on the radio back then, but when MTV came along that all changed. The first music video ever played on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star," by the Buggles foreshadowing what was to come for the startup company. In the 80’s of MTV also called the Golden Age of MTV, the network quickly became the voice of the youth

Steven Maxwell, a professor from Kansas State University stated "Some bands that were less talented but had great visual appeal became more popular," (Maxwell, 2011). The Music Industry was changing due to MTV and its influence. Chenjerai Kumanyika states That “A key component of MTV’s brand identity is a reputation for both irreverent authenticity and cutting-edge entertainment” (Kumanyika, 2011). Soon MTV biggest star was not Madonna or Michael Jackson but it was MTV, regardless of who or what was trending at the time it was the culture or at least where the culture would gather. A key formula to MTV’s success staying the voice of the youth is to constantly reinvent itself for a new generation. In the 90’s MTV started to focus less on music videos due to the decline in ratings and started to create programming such as reality shows, game shows, cartoons, talk shows and dramatic series. This differed from their traditional twenty-four-hour music video programming but as the youth changed their interest and focus so did MTV. Shows Like The Real World, Beavis and Butthead became the new staples of the network due to the popularity it garnered with the Teen and young adult demographics. As the world entered into the 2000’s and social media started to emerge the network again reinvented itself by losing all of its music programming and centered the rest of its show around social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Many people who were once fans of the music giant criticize the network because of its lack of music programming .Cameron Williams, a journalist from SBS describes this period as “The bubble bursting” (Williams,