MTV, an arbiter of cool in the 1990s, is planning to relive its glory days.  The network said on Thursday that VH1 Classic would be rebranded as MTV Classic and serve up a throwback lineup including “Beavis & Butt-head,” “Daria,” “Real World,” “Cribs” and other older staples.  MTV, which is owned by Viacom, said the new channel would mine its huge vault of archival programming, with special attention on the 1990s and early 2000s.  Erik Flannigan, an executive vice president at MTV, said the move was designed to capitalize on a trend toward nostalgia in popular culture, citing examples like #throwbackthursday, the popular social media hashtag, and the reboots of game shows on ABC.  “Looking back seems to be wildly in vogue,” Mr. Flannigan said in an interview on Thursday.  There will also be music, too. The channel plans to run blocks of music programming on themes related to a decade or genre, as well as repeats of live performance shows like “Storytellers.”  The new channel will begin on Aug. 1, coinciding with MTV’s debut 35 years earlier. It will kick off with a rebroadcast of the network’s first hour in 1981, followed by a “Total Request Live” retrospective and a marathon of “MTV Unplugged.”  The new channel is being introduced as MTV is in the midst of a five-year effort to digitize its archive of programming — estimated to contain roughly two million files — a project that is about halfway complete.  “Part of the idea of putting things back on air is also having ready access to those assets,” Mr. Flannigan said. “We now have a much better system to really troll through our own vault and recover what’s there.”  Viacom has faced stubborn ratings declines at MTV and its collection of cable television networks. MTV, with its target 18- to 24-year-old demographic, has struggled to reverse its declines as younger viewers abandon traditional television.  A version of this article appears in print on August 1, 2016, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Beavis & Butt-head’ to Return on MTV Classic. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
MTV’s parent company, Viacom, is rebranding VH1 Classic as MTV Classic, and digging into the archives for shows from the 1990s and 2000s.