Why did MTV stop playing music videos?

MTV didn’t stop playing music videos overnight; it gradually shifted away from them because reality and lifestyle programming was more profitable and kept viewers watching longer.

The main reasons were:

• Short videos are harder to monetize on TV. Music videos run only a few minutes, so viewers could easily channel-surf. Longer shows and reality series keep people tuned in for bigger blocks of time, which is better for ratings and advertising.
• Reality TV became cheaper and more lucrative. Shows like The Real World helped MTV see that original unscripted programming could draw large audiences at lower production cost than music-video blocks.
• The internet made videos on demand. By the 2000s, and especially after YouTube, people could find and watch specific videos whenever they wanted instead of waiting for MTV to schedule them.

MTV did not abandon music videos entirely. It reduced them on the main MTV channel, while music-video programming continued in blocks and on some MTV-branded spin-off channels, which have varied by market and over time.