The removal of Music Television from MTV’s classic logo in February was met with reactions ranging from indifference to “It’s about time!”MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore and hasn’t focused on music since the turn of the millennium. But the removal of “Music Television” from MTV’s brand marks a symbolic end to an era of pop music. In the ’80s and ’90s, MTV was the main outlet for pop music videos and possibly for music as a whole.  The revolutionary business model of all-day music-video programming ushered in the era of the ultimate pop star when the network launched in 1981. Music videos showcased the artists in a new aesthetic and helped make artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna pop icons with the visuals they perfected in their videos.MTV was most famous for its daily music video countdown, “Total Request Live,” as recently as the early half of the decade.No channel currently plays music videos any time other than the early morning hours. MTV has a six-hour swath from 3-9 a.m. but will often cut several hours from that time slot to air more reality  show reruns.What will the fate of the music video be without a viable mass media outlet for videos in mainstream culture? Videos are no longer as synonymous with pop songs as they once were — Lady Gaga’s outrageous efforts may be the last of this phenomenon. A regression back to a relative dearth of music videos seen before the onslaught of MTV is possible. It may no longer be viable from a financial or an exposure standpoint to produce a music video.YouTube has changed the music video game, but the mass availability of music and videos within instant reach could make the Internet a fickle avenue to promote videos. MTV and the Billboard charts no longer play much of a tastemaking role in the pop music landscape. Top-40 radio is on its last leg as Internet, satellite radio and more advanced car stereo options have essentially neutered its relevance.So where does this leave the strange “genre” of pop music?Popular culture, and subsequently pop music, serves as a uniting force of society. Ideally, great pop songs connect people well enough that they become a form of social currency, and the best pop songs demand to be heard on a large scale.For the first two decades of its existence, MTV served as a vehicle to bridge audiences and unite listeners, providing pop songs with the mass exposure they require. The network united genres, from heavy metal to new-wave to Madonna, under a common pop umbrella and defined the genre and its boundaries.Without a single entity like MTV serving as a watchdog of sorts for the boundaries of pop, the style of music no longer holds the undivided audience the form demands.File sharing, music blogs, Pandora and iTunes have allowed exposure to wider varieties of music as MTV’s musical relevance has withered in the past five years.The playground of pop music certainly need not be exclusive, and the breakthroughs of artists like M.I.A. and Vampire Weekend into mainstream culture are not negative signs for pop music.It is the lack of a singular vehicle that can make these musicians, with their unique and — yes — pop sensibilities, into iconic artists that is lamentable.Just because the network did not always promote the most critically acclaimed music doesn’t detract from the wide influence it held over pop music.MTV, with its once far-reaching influence on youth’s tastes in music, ensured both a variety of styles and the large audience necessary for effective pop music.—-Contact Chris Abshire at [email protected]