MTV Stops Pretending They Still Show Music

Nearly 18 years after MTV aired the first episode of The Real World, opening the floodgates that would let in the likes of Laguna Beach, The Hills, Jersey Shore and countless other non-music programs, the original 24-hour music channel has finally admitted that, well… it just really doesn’t show music anymore, and it’s updating its logo to reflect this sad fact.

Since MTV’s launch in August 1981, the iconic capital M logo has included the words “music television,” but the cable channel has decided that this is not how their core audience views the network anymore.

“The people who watch it today, they don’t refer to MTV as music television,” the net’s head of marketing Tina Exarhos said in a statement. “They don’t have the same emotional connection that, say, the people who are writing about [the logo change] do.”

Though MTV’s name no longer means “Music Television,” it doesn’t appear that they’re going to go down the road of The Nashville Network, which tried to rebrand itself as The National Network before ultimately becoming guy-centric channel Spike TV.

MTV Removes “Music Television” From Iconic Logo [Rolling Stone]

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