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MTV redesigns iconic logo

No more Music Television as MTV rebrands its iconic logo after 29 years, to fit with broader channel programming.

After 29 years MTV has redesigned its iconic logo, in a move to shift away from its “Music Television” brand.

While it will still feature the monolithic “M” and “TV” it has dropped the text “Music Television,” confirming fears that music is no longer the channel’s priority. The two words had always appeared underneath the logo, until now.

Across its history MTV has thrived on reality shows such as The Osbournes, Newlyweds, Jackass, Jersey Shore, The Hills and The Real World, while TRL has been cancelled. 1992’s The Real World is widely considered the forerunner of the reality TV genre.

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

That would probably be that because for most of its life, the channel was constantly entertaining us with new graphics of the logo…

But as Exarhos says, “It felt like, ‘Why have we been so scared [to change] when the channel itself has evolved so much over the years?’ ”

The network is expected to continue with the Video Music Awards.

Source: Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times

24 Responses

  1. I agree with CT on a 24/7 rage FTA channel and really wish ABC would forget about ABC4 as a News channel and turn it into a rage Channel, so much History there you could replay on it, Guest Hosts and etc.

  2. Not devestated. MTV hasn’t been about music in so long… and the music it has focused on is the horrible generic mainstream Top 40 RnB and Rap that pollutes the charts these days… No interest in its current crop of alternative programming… 🙁

  3. I think we’re the most affected by MTV’s recent culling of music related stuff, because we only have 1 MTV available. It’s not so bad for the rest of the world that gets multiple tailored MTV channels.

  4. At least rage has largely kept to it’s brief of playing music clips, more so out of cost reasons than any other, as the ABC has no money to create the reality dross that MTV does. And attempts to produce personality based ‘youth’ programming have all failed on Saturday mornings, and it seems the ABC has only realised, what works to a large extent is the simple format of back to back music videos of the rage format, long may it continue. If anything, rage should be a 24/7 digital multi-channel. Pity that MTV has long lost its music focus.

  5. Music Television was one of the main pioneers of bringing popular music to television in the 80s. Isn’t it so sad seeing it in its present format of tacky cheap television with so little quality. “MTV” any guesses what the “M” stands for?

    Perhaps MTV classics (VH1) 70s/80s/90s will be what was as we knew it Music Television?

  6. It’s a crying shame that the network which played such a significant role in the reframing of popular music back in the 80s (although it owes a lot to Australia’s Countdown) has mutated beyond recognition into the reality tv monster that it is now.
    Video may have killed the radio star, but cheap and mindless reality television has mortally wounded a television icon. One wonders what the next casualty will be.

  7. Wish MTV would just go away, and the executives who commission the crap they screen should be jailed – they’re to thank for the stupidity of todays youth, with all the “reality” shows crap they keep coming up with. Maybe they can add ‘Moron Television’ to the logo.

    Theres a movie, no – it could be called a documentary, about our future – its called Idiocracy.

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