More than two decades’ worth of content published on MTVNews.com is no longer available after MTV appears to have fully pulled down the site and its related content. Content on its sister site, CMT.com, seems to have met a similiar fate.
In 2023, MTV News was shuttered amid the financial woes of parent company Paramount Global. As of Monday, trying to access MTV News articles on mtvnews.com or mtv.com/news resulted in visitors being redirected to the main MTV website.
The now-unavailable content includes decades of music journalism comprising thousands of articles and interviews with countless major artists, dating back to the site’s launch in 1996. Perhaps the most significant loss is MTV News’ vast hip-hop-related archives, particularly its weekly “Mixtape Monday” column, which ran for nearly a decade in the 2000s and 2010s and featured interviews, reviews and more with many artists, producers and others early in their careers.
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Former MTV News staffers posted on social media about the website shutdown and the scrubbing of the archives. “So, mtvnews.com no longer exists. Eight years of my life are gone without a trace,” Patrick Hosken, former music editor for MTV News, wrote on X. “All because it didn’t fit some executives’ bottom lines. Infuriating is too small a word.”
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“sickening (derogatory) to see the entire @mtvnews archive wiped from the internet,” Crystal Bell, culture editor at Mashable and one-time entertainment director of MTV News, posted on X. “decades of music history gone…including some very early k-pop stories.”
“This is disgraceful. They’ve completely wiped the MTV News archive,” longtime Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt commented. “Decades of pop culture history research material gone, and why?”
Last week, Paramount Global’s CMT website similarly pulled its repository of country-music journalism dating back several decades.
Reps for MTV did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Some observers noted that MTV News articles may be available through internet archiving services like the Wayback Machine, but according to Hiatt older MTV News articles do not show up via Wayback Machine.
In May 2023, Paramount Global shut down MTV News — which had already been severely downsized by layoffs in recent years — coming amid a 25% reduction in workforce across the Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks groups in the U.S. The group is headed by president-CEO Chris McCarthy, who in late April was named one of the three co-CEOs running Paramount Global’s “Office of the CEO.”
MTV News began in the late ’80s with “The Week in Rock,” a show hosted by Kurt Loder, who became the first MTV News anchor.
Additional reporting by Jem Aswad, a former MTV News editor.
Clowns run Paramount…total clowns.
They literally are running all their cable brands into the ground when it’s these brands that if given a 24/7 life everywhere brand like the streaming news networks and on social it would be a money maker. I hope someone buys paramount before everything is gone gone. The people in charge now are running this into the ground quick. Every viacom brand and sub brand should be a streaming brand with digital. MTV NEWS should be a cultures channel.
MTV News started almost immediately after they launched in 1981. When Doug Herzog arrived in ’84, it became more of an actual news department. The on air VJ’s were the first news correspondents, doing interviews, reporting on music happenings and covering events like Live Aid. The “Week in Rock” was originally a news segment, that was edited on Fridays and went to air over the weekend. This was a year or two before Kurt Loder joined in ’87.
Interested in why scrapping of a web archive would be a cost saving. Are there significant expenses in maintaining it? No long-tail ad revs?
All Paramount networks and other Stuff have moved to Paramount+ as mtv.com is looking like it would be close over more Changes to Paramount network sad to see the websites changing or Going after Years of Viacom.
In USA has Paramount Pluto TV with MTV and CMT channels to lineup and notice to try Pluto via right top of mtv.com, cmt.com for Pluto TV web and App and Paramount+ may also have them too. More on paramount.com
oh no! Do you mean my 1989 announcement which Tom Freston called my “Al Haig moment’ is lost to history?! https://www.facebook.com/barry.kluger/videos/10157876393559358/