Record companies weren't funding them. Return of the Rock — [ edit ] Beginning in late , MTV progressively reduced its airing of rock music videos, leading to the slogan among skeptics, "Rock is dead. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. The program then became known as Subterranean on MTV2. In the fall of , MTV announced a special Return of the Rock weekend, [65] in which new rock acts received airtime, after which a compilation album was released.