Why Did MTV Stop Showing Reality Shows

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Why Did MTV Stop Showing Music Videos and Started Airing Reality Shows
For those who grew up during the 80s and 90s, MTV was more than just a music channel. The popular ‘Music television’ channel became a part of the daily life of many teenagers around the world as it featured some of the hottest updates from the music culture and of course, it was one of the earliest mediums to showcase the latest music videos. However, now if you switch to MTV, you would probably see some reality show such as ‘The Buried Life’ or ‘Teen Mom’ being aired. Why is that so? Why MTV decided to change its content from music video to reality shows? Let’s analyze some important facts to see how this transition happened.
In early 1980s, the music culture was booming and artists like Michael Jackson, the Police, Prince and Madonna were producing music videos which aimed to entice the audience and keep them glued to the television. For example, ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson, with its phenomenal movie-style video created a hysteria among the audience and the fans would stay tuned for hours to MTV to watch the music video on the television. Why we are focusing on the world television so much is because during the 80s, the internet wasn’t common and viewers didn’t have the luxury and convenience of just …show more content…

One of the posts at Reddit.com mentions that MTV decided to stop showing music videos because there was more money in airing reality shows. The MTV 20 years ago was generating a large revenue and had a good rating because people didn’t have access to downloadable music. Another user at Quora, Jason Panick, who has a 7 years’ experience in Reality TV production and development, also mentions the same reason that reality shows draws more audience which in turn boosts sales. But these theories can be classified as incorrect as MTV is currently in loss and not making profit from reality

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