The shutdown of MTV’s music channels, almost 45 years after its launch, represents for many around the world yet another in a series of consequences of profound changes in the media industry. But for generations who grew up with this channel, especially in countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the end of MTV carries a strong emotional, cultural, and historical charge. MTV was never just television. At certain moments, it was a witness to its time, a voice of youth, and a rare global medium that, during the aggression against BiH, showed that culture and music had not disappeared under shellfire.
MTV as a cultural revolution
Since its launch in 1981, MTV fundamentally changed the music industry. The music video, until then a rare and expensive promotional tool, became a necessity. The visual identity of performers gained equal weight to sound, and pop culture for the first time acquired a global, shared platform.
For MTV’s target audience, both in the United States (U.S.) and in Europe, rock ‘n’ roll was a universal language – the lingua franca of a generation. But rock itself was not new. What made MTV different was its ability to recognize change before others. Realizing that local musical expressions did not function on a global level, MTV turned to new genres and subcultures: acid house, rap, and hip-hop, which it was among the first to promote. The rest is history.
MTV soon became synonymous with “cool” – a guide to new trends, styles, and ideas that shaped the identity of young people around the world.
The first taste of freedom behind the Iron Curtain
In Europe, the beginnings of MTV coincided with the collapse of the communist system. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, global cultural trends arrived late or not at all. For many Eastern Europeans, the West was a symbol of progress but also an unattainable world. In that context, MTV became the first tangible contact with freedom, a window into a world that until then had existed only in fragments.
What had until recently seemed unimaginable – that major world bands would perform in Sarajevo with live television broadcasts and promotional appearances – soon became reality. MTV’s model of operation, characteristic of the West, began to be replicated closer to home as well.
A bridge between Yugoslavia and MTV
In that period, individuals from the region tried to connect the local music scene with global currents. Among them was Lida Hujic, who sought to open space for bands from the then Yugoslavia. But the system had clear rules: just as French chanson did not make it through, local music from the Balkans also found it difficult to reach a global MTV audience.
Still, through the show 120 Minutes, hosted by the legendary Paul King, music videos by bands such as Psihomodo Pop, Disciplina kicme (whose frontman Koja was then living in London), and Laibach occasionally managed to break through. Laibach would soon sign a contract with the record label Mute and become a cult name on the global alternative scene.
War, siege, and media responsibility
With the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo in 1992, MTV faced a challenge unlike any other music channel. Although it was never a political television network, thanks to people such as Brent Hansen, then director of programming, and Bill Roedy, there was a sense of responsibility to respond.
MTV News aired the first reports on the resistance of the citizens of besieged Sarajevo, from a perspective different from that of traditional news channels. The focus was not only on death and destruction, but on life that continued despite everything.
VJ Pip Dann reported on the first Sarajevo Film Festival held under siege, relying on direct sources from the field. The festival, one of whose initiators was director Haris Pasovic, became a symbol of cultural resistance. Films arrived in Sarajevo on VHS tapes, through humanitarian channels that would later grow into the organization War Child. One of its founders, David Wilson, would later become the first director of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, built thanks to international donations.
“Miss Sarajevo” and global solidarity
One of the strongest cultural bridges between Sarajevo and a global audience was the song “Miss Sarajevo,” performed by U2 and Brian Eno, with the voice of Luciano Pavarotti. The song was inspired by the documentary of the same name and a real event – the Miss Besieged Sarajevo pageant in 1993, when young women from Sarajevo stepped onto an improvised stage holding a banner reading “Don’t let them kill us.”
MTV played a key role in spreading this story. The video for “Miss Sarajevo” was broadcast around the world, and images of young people from a city under siege became part of the collective global consciousness. Music, at least for a moment, did what politics did not – it forced audiences to see Sarajevo not only as a place of suffering, but also as a symbol of dignity and resistance.
Although MTV later moved away from its original musical mission, turning to reality programming and more commercial content, its legacy remains deeply rooted. The shutdown of the music channels at the end of 2025 symbolically closes a circle that began in the early eighties – a circle in which music was the central language of a global generation.
For audiences in BiH, that ending carries additional weight. Because MTV was not only part of growing up, but also rare proof that culture can survive even in the most difficult historical circumstances.
More than television
The shutdown of MTV is therefore not just a technical or market-related piece of news. It marks the end of a cultural model in which music was a bearer of identity, solidarity, and global connectedness. In the case of BiH, MTV will also be remembered as a medium that gave space to stories about Sarajevo, young people, and life under siege, at a time when those stories were needed most.
In a world of algorithms and endless playlists, that kind of shared experience almost no longer exists. That is why the end of MTV is not just the end of one channel, but the closing of a chapter in which music had the power to connect cities, countries, and people – even while they were divided by war.
