Is MTV Really Ending?
The new year is upon us… and with it, a pretty unique rumor surrounding a certain cultural institution.
In recent days, social media has been filled with posts claiming that MTV is no more. The posts allege that the long-running network went off the air after playing the music video for The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”, which was the first thing played on air decades ago. But is this poetic rumor actually true?
No, MTV has not shut down entirely. At the time of this writing, you can tune into the main channel right now and be treated to hours-long blocks of Ridiculousness and The Big Bang Theory. What was shut down on New Year’s Eve were a few of MTV’s music-focused spinoff channels in the U.K., a decision made by the station’s parent company, Paramount Skydance.
As a source told Variety, “MTV’s specialist music channels in the UK will no longer operate as linear channels. The flagship MTV UK channel will continue to broadcast… Paramount is reviewing and adjusting its international Pay TV portfolio, given shifts in audience behavior towards streaming and digital platforms.”
The rumor of MTV’s demise could have easily been debunked by… just turning on a television and doing a little channel surfing, which is a frustrating example of the state of media literacy in our current moment. But at the same time, it’s understandable that those posts would go viral and spark such a visceral reaction, especially given MTV’s decades-long cultural reputation.
When MTV first launched in 1981, it fully lived up to its name of “Music Television”, airing music videos and various behind-the-scenes ephemera to get fans closer to their favorite musicians. Over time, that thesis statement obviously evolved… but MTV still found ways to reflect the pop culture of its specific moment, particularly with the ever-growing number of original shows sprinkled between the blocks of music videos and music-related programming.
I could be here all day listing the movies and shows that MTV brought into the world, ranging from reality shows to scripted programming to genre-bending animation. A number of cultural institutions came out of that, like Beavis and Butt-Head and Jackass, as well as countless under-the-radar favorites. The network even spun off into a publishing line (which I voraciously read as a tween), and which was still around as recently as 2024.
In recent years, as viewers have shifted away from linear television and costs have just been cut in general, that has obviously evolved. As I mentioned at the start of this article, the network largely carries reruns of existing or syndicated shows, and even stopped making new episodes of some of its long-running shows last year. Even the network’s beloved VMA Awards have started being broadcast on other networks.
MTV News, a spinoff website and media brand carrying over the channel’s energy, was also shut down in the summer of 2023. The MTV News website was then scrubbed entirely in 2025, although backups of some articles can be found with some digging online. (Which is a godsend for me, someone who frequently goes down rabbit holes around their old comics and pop culture reporting.)
So yes, MTV is still around… but it might not be the wall-to-wall outlet of music videos or the wacky cultural menagerie of original programming that you might recognize.
(featured image: MTV)
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