This has been a sad day for lovers of music. Legendary artist Prince has passed away at the age of 57. His death is a blow to the music business, and MTV has found a way to honor him in a way that manages to be both awesome and touching. The cable channel has foregone its scheduled programming for the afternoon. Instead, MTV is playing a marathon of Prince music videos.
The marathon replaced a block of Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory on the airwaves, according to Entertainment Weekly. All in all, MTV is the perfect network to pay tribute to Prince with a music video marathon. Over the years, Prince's videos have been honored with no less than twelve nominations from the MTV Video Music Awards. He won Best Choreography in a Video, Best Male Video, Best Stage Performance in a Video, and Best Dance Video from the VMAs over his career. He also won seven Grammy awards and one Academy Award. Check out his award-winning video for “Cream” from 1992:
The music video marathon comes on the heels of MTV’s announcement that the channel will be getting back into the business of crafting television shows based around music. MTV has faced criticism in recent years for its departures from its musical roots, and the co-creator even referred to a “creative drain” that took a toll on MTV’s content. Now that MTV is bringing back MTV Unplugged for another go and premiering a new series featuring regular live performances, viewers may see MTV eke its way back to its glory days of years past. A marathon of Prince videos is certainly an appropriate way to start.
The glory days are actually set to be represented in the near future in a biopic that will cover the first ten years of the network. The project will be called I Want My MTV, and it should be interesting to see how the network that once set itself apart by regularly playing videos by artists like Prince compares to what MTV has become today.
MTV isn’t the only network to choose to honor Prince in the wake of his death. VH1 also changed its scheduling to air a block of Prince’s most popular music videos. In addition, his movie Purple Rain will play several times over the weekend on VH1. Be sure to tune in to either or both of the networks to catch tributes to what Prince accomplished in the music biz in his lifetime. You may end up with some songs stuck in your head, but at least they’ll be by Prince.
Don’t forget to check out our schedule of summer TV premiere dates to see what will be hitting the airwaves on all the networks in the not-too-distant future.
