Music Television, commonly known as MTV is an insanely popular channel that is known for airing music videos by a range of musicians. The first ever music video to be released on MTV was for a song called “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. The video was released 33 years ago on Aug. 1, 1981. Ever since the release of the first music video, MTV’s popularity has greatly risen. However, the evolution and types of videos MTV have been airing lately have changed drastically since then.

MTV has produced amazingly popular artists such as Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, The Who, David Bowie, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many more.

Robert Pittman and Tom Freston were the two very creative men who came up with this idea of having a station where only music videos of popular or non-popular artist could showcase their music. However, the channel that these two men started a long while back is not nearly as close to what it used to be.

To start off, MTV does not even produce music videos anymore even though it is a company that started off by launching them. Also, MTV has created both television series and reality TV. It has produced shows such as “Awkward,” “16 and Pregnant,” “Jersey Shore,” “Teen Wolf” and more. These shows have become very popular, and only added to MTV’s success.

Gabriella Rose (’17) said, “MTV should completely change its name considering it isn’t even producing music videos anymore. Its very strange how a company started off doing one thing, and ended with [doing] another.”

Not only has MTV produced television shows, but it has also started to host its own awards, which are called “MTV Video Music Awards.” There have been various celebrity guests who have hosted the show. Some of these hosts include Kevin Hart and Russell Brand.

There are other channels that can be considered to be the “old” MTV which produce music videos for musical artists such as Vevo. Vevo is a music video company that produces music videos for well known stars and then posts these videos on YouTube. Another company that produces music videos is called Vimeo. The only difference with Vimeo is that videos get posted to the Vimeo site instead of YouTube.

Many people used to enjoy watching MTV music videos because it brought America together through music.

“I wish MTV still produced music videos, they were really cool and I enjoyed watching them with my family and friends,” said Samantha Abrams (’17).

Just like Samantha, many other people all around the nation miss the “old” but better version of MTV.