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It was once the most influential music channel that could make or break careers but after 36 years, MTV News is signing off the airwaves so pour one out for your Gen X and older Millennial friends who were practically raised by it back when cable was a thing.
According to reports, layoffs across parent company Paramount Global spelled the end for the subversive and brash news channel that first launched in 1987 and spearheaded by Kurt Loder. It truly cemented itself in the mid 90s, reporting on some of music’s biggest news occurrences such as the death of Kurt Cobain and even had interviews with competing presidential candidates George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, such was the scope of its reach to younger audiences.
It was during a town hall address, hosted by journalists Tabitha Soren and Alison Stewart, that the world got to learn that Bill Clinton is a briefs man.
These town halls would become a regular viewing, with Barack Obama, Bill Gates and John McCain all taking part and the question of boxers or briefs itself became part of that tradition.
It wasn’t all tongue in cheek either. Coverage of world events such as the Iraq War would garner MTV News journalists prestigious Emmys and Peabody Awards.
But things changed as the internet, online news and websites such as the once reputable Buzzfeed and Vice began competing for attention. MTV News quickly found itself struggling to keep up and by 2017, it was a fraction of its former size.
Approximately 25 percent of employees across the company at MTV Entertainment Studios, Paramount Media Networks, and Showtime discovered they no longer had a job on Tuesday, May 9.
While MTV is still in operation, the current situation is proving to be precarious at best. Perhaps the channel has written its own fate when it decided, as its first every video to air, they chose The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star.
