The MTV News Website R.I.P.

On May 9 2023 it was announced that MTV News, the news division of MTV would close. It was then just two days ago, on June 24 2024, that Paramount Global shuttered the MTV News website, making it clear that MTV News was no more. Apparently editorial content on the website for CMT (essentially what was the country music version of MTV) is gone as well.

The closure of the MTV News website essentially erases nearly thirty years of content. This includes news articles, interviews with major artists, and news columns. Quite simply a good deal of music history is gone now. Some of the content dated back to 1996, when the MTV News website was launched. It seems likely that some of the content may have been archived by the Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the Wayback Machine archived many of the early MTV News content (it began archiving pages in 1996, the same year that the MTV News website was launched). Also, the Wayback Machine can be hit or miss in archiving many websites, particularly ones from the late Nineties and the early Naughts.

In many ways the closure of the MTV News website is the final nail in the coffin of MTV as we originally knew it. When MTV was originally launched in 1981, it was a cable channel entirely dedicated to music videos. In 1987 MTV News began. While MTV would add programming other than music videos and music-oriented programming over time, in 1996 much of its programming was still dedicated to music. Sadly, as time passed, MTV eventually phased out its music content in favour of reality shows and the occasional scripted show.  MTV ceased to be "Music Television" long ago.

The MTV News archive was the last vestige of MTV's days as a music channel. With its closure MTV has now completely become a channel dedicated primarily to reality shows. Once a cultural phenomenon that even inspired a fad towards music videos in the Eighties, it is now pretty much just another cable channel. I honestly doubt that they have the audience they once had.