Happy Late Birthday MTV...I miss you...

MTV ("Music" Television)...and I am depressed to see what you have "grown" into...but then again, maybe it is I who has grown? (I want my VH1 Classic?!?!)

So cruel, my former love...says a MTV spokesman on why the channel isn't dwelling on its history:

"MTV has a 25-year heritage of looking forward, rather than back," spokeswoman Marnie Black wrote in an e-mail. "We made the decision when MTV was founded to always stay young and evolve with our audience. To do that, it has been important to serve our audience at that moment, not our audience of yesterday."

Ouch.

Slate writer Troy Patterson reflects on MTV's first day, on Aug. 1, 25 years ago - an anniversary the channel is barely acknowledging. That's long before Headbangers Ball or TRL or the Real World or Beavis or Butthead or whatever they show now that is seldom music.

MTV was already a year old when it came to Malvern around 1982ish. A fifth grader just gingerly dipping my toe into popular music, I didn't recognize much. I think my earliest memory of recognizing a song I liked on MTV was seeing trenchcoated Hall and Oates singing "Private Eyes."

Then came Duran Duran, then hair metal, Metallica... and my magical mystery tour was well underway.

Present at the Creation [Slate]
The Ever Changing Youth of MTV: Now 25, Going on 11 [NY Times]
Yo! MTV's 25, But Don't Make a Fuss About It [Cox News via Middletown Journal]
Do You Still Want Your MTV? [Beacon Journal]