Manky Television

MTV, which now hosts mainly reality television series, has dropped ‘Music Television’ from its official logo giving the brand more flexibility. “Twenty-five years ago, MTV was best known for music videos starring Michael Jackson and Madonna. These days, its reigning queen is not a recording star at all but rather Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, the rowdy party girl from the reality series ‘Jersey Shore.’

So maybe it’s not surprising that this week the 29-year-old network bowed to the inevitable and finally scraped the legend ‘Music Television’ off its corporate logo. The change was a belated acknowledgment of what has been obvious for years: MTV has evolved into a reality channel that occasionally runs programs that have to do with music. But the shift is significant because, in an era of rapid technological change and microscopic attention spans, how networks identify themselves matters more than ever, experts say. MTV ‘realized being ‘music television’ was too limiting,’ said Dave Howe, president of Syfy, home of such series as ‘Stargate Universe’ and the now-defunct ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ Howe says the right brand is essential ‘to cut through the noise and clutter of the media explosion’ bedeviling the TV industry.”