As Top of the Pops succumbs to an era more interested in music downloads than chart shows, MTV is today celebrating 25 years as the alternative upstart with a major digital overhaul to try and keep in touch with today's youth.
MTV launched at midnight on August 1, 1981 in the US with Video Killed the Radio Star. Now music videos are being killed by MP3's and Mpgs, the Viacom-owned channel is looking to re-invent itself as MTV 2.0.
While it has adapted its programming significantly beyond music since 1981 - launching shows such as Jackass, The Osbournes and Real World - the changing media habits of consumers and the arrival of video-sharing and community sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Google are posing challenges to MTV's core music primacy.
John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum, says that MTV's youth-targeted heritage has meant hat it has always had to keep on its toes to tap its target market.
"It is important to note that unlike other channels they have always had to target an "in-flux" market of transitional viewers so MTV has always had to have an eye on how to capture new audiences."
To this end there has been a flurry of activity in recent months with the launch of three new digital services that will be critical to the future of the brand.
Video on demand entertainment service MTV Overdrive; Microsoft-supported music download service Urge, not yet available in the UK; and, come September, MTV Flux, a new channel that will show clips sent in by viewers with the schedule determined by voting. Viewers will also be able chat with each other on live TV and MTV aims to develop a community around the channel through a large-scale web site.
"There is a recognition that audiences are consuming more content online with the rapid growth of broadband penetration," said Angel Gambino, vice president at MTV UK & Ireland. "And it certainly isn't a case of just putting TV online".
She says that there are no plans to look to provide all of MTV's content via a product such as Overdrive. Some shows will be aired exclusively, some with a "360" approach of providing TV, mobile and on-demand delivery.
Gambino claims - against the personal views of some MTV's old guard - that the on-demand service has actually increased consumption of the core TV programmes.
In fact, figures from media agency Initiative show that from 2004 to 2005 MTV actually increased its share of commercial TV viewers in the key 16 to 34 year old age demogrpahic from 1.6% to 1.7%.
A second strand of the digital development is to increase transactional services - online, via TV or by mobile. MTV Urge, with a choice of pay by subscription and a la carte, is meant to be an answer to the likes of iTunes.
However, Jonathan Arber, an analyst at Ovum, points out that the service has drawbacks, not least among them that it isn't iPod compatible.
"MTV has a big advantage entering the music download market because of its historical brand postioning, however traditionally it is an entertainment provider not a seller of content."
It is very difficult to build a brand from scratch as a retailer. Furthermore, Microsoft announcing that it is to launch its own, probably proprietary, music device and service, called Zune, may throw a major spanner in the works for MTV's joint venture.
There is also increasing pressure on its broadcast channels.
It is not a well-known fact that almost 50% of MTV's European audience is derived from MTV Italy, according to analysts. MTV Italy was the first to launch in Europe and it did so as a mainstream national channel - unlike in the UK and most other markets.
In other markets MTV's parent Viacom snapped up rivals such as TMF and Viva - the leading music channels ahead of MTV in the Netherlands and Germany respectively - keeping both as standalone brands and continuing to dominate market share.
Furthermore, the competitive TV landscape couldn't be more different today from when MTV was the new-kid-on-the-block with more than 20 competitor channels and programmes in the UK alone.
It is these pressures that make MTV's newest announcement Flux - a sort of MySpace meets YouTube on television - perhaps most fundamental to the way MTV sees itself in the future.
In fact, Gambino says that the underlying elements of interactivity, live chat, community and user generated content, will most likely be exported to all of MTV's 11 UK channels in the future.
When it boils down to it, MTV 2.0 is perhaps a bid to gain first mover advantage and keep ahead of the possibility of being out-maneuvered by a YouTube TV or a MySpace TV channel - not to mention where Steve Jobs may look to take the iTunes and iPod juggernaut.
