First, let’s put to rest a common misunderstanding: yes, MTV still plays music videos. Honest. Watch in the early morning for an hour or two under the “AMTV” tag — I’ve seen them only when awake for a doctor’s appointment or, more likely, up late for an overnight deadline, but they’re there, you naysayers.

Still, if programming decisions could be the embodiment of institutional resentment and defensiveness, this would be it. The videos are there, but only as if to fulfill the letter, not the spirit, of some legal mandate — or to justify the existence of the annual Video Music Awards.

It’s been this way for about a decade, this tortured relationship between the music video and the channel that used to love it, obsess over it, place it at the center of its life. But relationships change. The MTV that’s a repository of youth-culture reality programming is just as important, if not more so, than the wall-to-wall video channel that birthed it.

Still, history nags. MTV celebrates its 30th birthday on Monday, old enough to look back on its childhood days with nostalgia, not embarrassment. Certainly that’s part of the explanation for the decision by MTV — well, MTV2, which hasn’t been much more hospitable to music than its parent channel, but beggars can’t be choosers — to revive one of its signature 1980s-’90s franchises this weekend.