God knows what the business model was for MTV 40 years ago, evidently being “wildly successful’ wasn’t part of it. They were a big deal as far as I could tell. The answer of course is “follow the money“. A Google search turned up this answer below. I have no idea what the real reasons were that would cause a channel calling itself “Music Television” to quit playing music. Evidently kids watch it, God knows why. To this day I remember videos from the mid-80’s, there was some good stuff. And judging the videos popping up on YouTube, there are lots of people that miss it.

“MTV stopped playing music because of the ever increasing demands of the Music Industry for higher licencing fees. Their demands were too high so MTV moved the videos to their less popular sister company VH1 where licencing fees were lower and moved to less expensive but more profitable “reality: programming.”