Just in case you thought that all the talk about the changing media landscape was only threatening the future of newspapers, sit-coms, and books, MTV’s recent decision to drop its “music television” tagline indicates that change is afoot in all quarters. MTV, the upstart cable network that killed the radio star when it launched in 1981, seems, in 2009, to have killed the music star, too.
(For an inside history of the logos, see Rolling Stone’s coverage here)
Tina Exarhos, executive vice president of marketing and multiplatform creative projects, told The NY Daily News, “Music is still at the heart of everything we do, but it’s about a lot more now.” It’s a strange statement, really, affirming the centrality of music while also exiling it to MTV’s marginal siblings (MTV2, MTVU, and so on).
More than just an indication of the shift in the network’s focus (a shift that has been well underway for some time), it confirms the centrality of music as a signifier, but the marginality of music as something one might actually listen to, play, hum, see performed live, or otherwise participate in. “Music,” in Exharos’ formulation doesn’t pertain to music made of notes, but rather music made of ideas, symbols, and suggestions of what’s cool, cutting edge, hip, or maybe even interesting. But it’s not about strings of notes or revolutions of turntables.
What is the world of media coming to when even music television isn’t about music anymore? I guess the change in MTV’s logo means that my television will return to being a television, and I can return to my stereo (or ipod, headphones, or even my own guitar) with a newly recovered sense of where music rather belongs.
... and everyday life 
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