MTV to Shut Down Music Channels After 40 Years as Paramount Restructures Global Network

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MTV To Shut Down Music Channels After 40 Years As Paramount Restructures Global Network

After nearly four decades of shaping pop culture, MTV is set to close its music channels, including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live, by December 31, 2025. Parent company Paramount Global confirmed the move as part of a major restructuring effort amid the rise of streaming...
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After nearly four decades on the air, MTV is set to end one of the most defining chapters in modern music television history. The iconic brand's parent company, Paramount Global, has confirmed plans to shut down all remaining MTV music channels by December 31, 2025, marking the end of an era for millions of fans who grew up watching music videos on television.

The closure will affect several MTV-branded spin-offs across Europe, including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. According to industry reports, the decision is part of a broader restructuring effort by Paramount, driven by cost-cutting and the ongoing shift of audiences from traditional TV to digital streaming.

The End of an Era
The affected networks, long known for non-stop music videos, countdowns, and throwback blocks, will cease broadcasting at the end of 2025 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, before similar shutdowns are implemented across parts of continental Europe and other international markets.

While these spin-off stations are being phased out, the flagship MTV channel will remain on air. However, for years, it has carried very little music content, focusing instead on popular entertainment and reality programming such as Catfish, Geordie Shore, and The Challenge.

The move will also impact several other Paramount-owned networks, including NickMusic EMEA, Comedy Central Extra, and Paramount Network, which are expected to follow suit in various markets as the company consolidates its linear television portfolio.
 
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Yeah they also close one of my all-time favourite channel focused on video games and air South Park, Scrubs and where I used to watch Futurama and Naruto when I was younger, despite making profits.

I really don't see the point
 
Man, now I'm starting to remember some of the awesome old shows. The Idiot Box with Alex Winter, Liquid Television, The Head, The Maxx, and of course Jackass.
 
ClanOfNone said:
MTV was the shit back in the day, then reality tv happened and it all went to hell.
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The Real World was the beginning of the end for MTV.

I didn't have cable growing up because I grew up in a rural area and it just wasn't available (this was pre-DirectTV, etc...), but I had cable in my dorm room in college in the mid-90s, and the TV was always playing either MTV, VH1 or ESPN in the background.

With the advent of YouTube, etc... there's really no reason for a channel like MTV or VH1 to exist anymore. Of course, artists don't really make big, extravagant music videos like they used to either.
 
I still watch rock.alt.indie on MTV Live HD, one of the few channels that carries no adverts and it's pan-European so you get a nice variety of music. That said, they still carry the PlutoTV channels like MTV Biggest Pop for the time being.
But yeah, this decade hasn't been good for music channels, we lost the Box channels (Kerrang, Magic) in 2024.

This only appears to affect the International channels, I assume the US music channels will carry on.
 
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They have music channels?

EDIT: MTV was such a big thing way back when. I loved watching the bands that I would probably never get to see in videos, performance or otherwise. I'm glad to have been part of that generation.

And "nearly 4 decades"? MTV came on air Aug. 1, 1981. That was more than 44 years ago.
 
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I remember when they brought out MTV2 all those years ago so they could still play music videos while the regular MTV was full of reality TV garbage. We would all sit around and watch MTV2 for hours.
End of an era (it ended decades ago, honestly).
 
Didn't really see MTV as a kid cos we didn't have Sky TV. By the time I got to see it regularly was early 2000's so It was going into the 'More shows than music' era.

Got Jackass, wild boyz and my favourite from that lot

Strutter.



Such a pain to find some shows :(
 
dave_d said:
In with



I guess that explains why for the past year or so they've been advertising constantly on my Tivo that I could get a Tivo Edge really cheap. (Yes I bought one as a backup.)
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How does it work with Streaming? Will it record streaming content?
 
These are the last videos I remember seeing on MTV. Mid 2000s. I'd see them every day when I'd come home from work. Good times.




 
Man, I still remember the British MTV during the late 80's and early 90's, the Ray cokes show, Headbanger's ball, waiting for Def Leppard's "let's get rocked" to show up, staying up late at night as to catch Therapy?'s "going nowhere", Beavis and Butthead etc etc...end of an era really, glad I lived through it ...
 
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AJUMP23 said:
How does it work with Streaming? Will it record streaming content?
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Not great. I mean I haven't seen an option to record streaming content with Prime video. Plus it doesn't have a lot of supported apps at least on my roamio. (It know it has prime, netflix, and plex.) From my attempts to use the Plex client it often couldn't play videos. (If they were too large I think) Plus it was slow to load or unload Prime. I know my brother used to use it for Netflix and he'd complain that it would often reboot things if he did that. Pretty much I use an Nvidia Shield for my streaming. (Since it's fast and I can add stuff since it's android.)
 
dave_d said:
Not great. I mean I haven't seen an option to record streaming content with Prime video. Plus it doesn't have a lot of supported apps at least on my roamio. (It know it has prime, netflix, and plex.) From my attempts to use the Plex client it often couldn't play videos. (If they were too large I think) Plus it was slow to load or unload Prime. I know my brother used to use it for Netflix and he'd complain that it would often reboot things if he did that. Pretty much I use an Nvidia Shield for my streaming. (Since it's fast and I can add stuff since it's android.)
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At the time it came out with regular TV it was brilliant. Content owners hated it, and moving to streaming gave the content owners more control. They will always move to where you have to come to them for access.
 
Spotify killed the video star? lol

We had MuchMusic here. Never really watched it, but at some point they barely even talked or showed music. They showed cartoons like Simpsons half the time.
 
I would think these would be pretty low cost to run unless royalties have gone up a lot. To be fair I imagine most people nowadays would just watch on Apple Music, YouTube or Spotify.
 
Uh mtv was already out of style when I was a kid ages ago. Fascinating if some people were still watching it in the 2020s.
 
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Guess it's back to moving these refrigerators and color TV's.
And man that song is so old they were still specifying that the TV's had color.
 
The main MTV channel is shit. But they have MTV music channels which are all music. Wife and I put those on all the time. Not anymore I guess.
 
MTV seems like a walking corpse at this point. So I'm surprised it's taken this long to finally take it out back and shoot it.
And it still kind of sucks to see it go out the way it is, with a bunch of Reality TV slop.
 
Last time I recall really watching MTV was the late 90's with Carson Daley pushing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera 24/7 non-stop with that afternoon countdown. Used to love their spring break events. Headbangers Ball of course was amazing, wonder if decent quality copies are on the internet.

And the GOAT MTV babe....Kari Wuhrer from Remote Control

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Ain't kicking Downtown Julie Brown outta bed either...

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