Tonight is the 25th anniversary of the launch of MTV.

Allan Sniffen sounds bitter:

MTV was the absolute worst thing that happened to music and radio. It killed hits becoming hits because they were good music. Instead, hits became hits because of their videos and popular culture hooks that were exploited by MTV.

Sure, the record companies loved it. They'll sell anything. But the music itself suffered and never really did recover. 25 years of MTV is nothing to be celebrating.

Well, it certainly killed the music radio template for presenting music.

Did Comedy Central kill standup comedy? It certainly provided a lower-cost alternative to comedy clubs for seeing standup comedy. But there's been an awful lot of brilliant standup comedy in the past 20 years.

Did HBO kill the movies? Did CNN kill the 6 p.m. local newscast? You could ask these questions all day long.

Did MTV prevent good music from getting airplay on the radio, if it wasn't accompanied by a great video? Probably no more than payola has prevented good music from getting airplay on the radio if a recording artist didn't have the "right" label with radio station connections.

Besides, MTV hasn't been about primarily about music video for at least the last decade of its 25 years.