MTV’s Rumored Demise Is Greatly Exaggerated

If you’ve been on social media at any point over the past few months, you’ve likely seen a myriad of reels, memes, and posts about the death of MTV. That’s right, the channel that exploded into the mainstream in the early ‘80s, revolutionizing the music industry by putting faces, performances, and concept videos to the songs heard on the radio, was officially done once the clock struck midnight on January 1.

Fans who grew up with what was once shorthand for “Music Television” were saddened and heartbroken as images of tombstones adorned with the iconic MTV logo declaring “Rest in Peace, 1981-2025” filled their feeds, even though most had tuned out from the channel decades ago.

“So incredibly sad to see this,” commented actor and singer Michael Damian on Instagram. “But I’m so grateful and honored to have had a [number one] music video in 1989!! Rock on, MTV…I will love you forever.”

Damian, who scored a chart-topping single with a cover of the David Essex classic “Rock On,” was hardly the only one metaphorically pouring one out for the channel.

“Thank you for making my childhood!” read one sentiment. “A huge piece of my childhood/teen/and early adulthood gone,” went another. “This is heartbreaking,” posted an account, one of many to bemoan the lack of actual music on MTV in recent times. “…I always hoped one day it would return to the MTV we all knew and loved before they turned to trash reality TV.”

And of course, there was the predictable slop like an AI-generated video of luminaries from MTV’s past, like TRL’s Carson Daly, MTV News anchor Kurt Loder, and “Pimp My Ride” host Xzibit all bowing their heads in solemn dismay. Even Beavis, from the titular “Beavis and Butt-Head,” was shown shedding a tear.  

But here’s the thing: MTV hasn’t gone anywhere. In fact, if you still have cable or satellite television, go check the guide, and you’ll see it right there in living color. At the time of this writing, an early evening of multiple episodes of the comedy clip show “Ridiculousness” gave way to the films “Pixels” and “Father Figures.” Overnight, it was back to “Ridiculousness,” which ran the entire next day until “Catfish: The TV Show” took over for the night.

Now, how any of that represents music is not the question here. Nor is it to try and justify “Ridiculousness” airing up to 16 hours a day. It’s to ask why, with so many people mourning the loss of MTV, it is still seemingly going strong?

Because nobody ever said, “MTV is shutting down.” In fact, the channels being taken off the air weren’t even in this country; they were in the United Kingdom. It was there where a handful of MTV-related stations went quiet: MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. Yet even there, their flagship MTV HD remains on-air.

Elsewhere in the world, including France, Australia, Poland, and Brazil, Paramount Skydance, MTV’s parent company, killed off channels similar to the shuttered UK ones.

“Paramount is reviewing and adjusting its international Pay TV portfolio, given shifts in audience behavior towards streaming and digital platforms,” a source told Rock Music Menu this week. “MTV’s specialist music channels in the UK and some international markets will no longer operate as linear channels. The flagship MTV channel will continue to broadcast in the UK and many markets.”

Then came the reveal that goes right against the grain of all those nasty internet rumors. “MTV channels in the U.S. continue to broadcast.”

That means, in addition to the “Ridiculousness” running MTV, consumers can also view MTV2, MTV Classic, and MTV Live, with the latter two exclusively music-centric. So, fear not, fans of the earliest days of Duran Duran, Madonna, Culture Club, and Men at Work, your nostalgia vehicle isn’t dead; it just doesn’t carry anything remotely like the programming you grew up on. And that might be the biggest bit of ridiculousness of all.

A version of this article appears in this week’s print and online editions of my syndicated Rock Music Menu column under the title “MTV’s rumored demise is greatly exaggerated.“