Just over a year after Paramount Global shut MTV News down as a media organization, the MTV News website has been pulled offline. Its archives, which included more than 20 years of writing and reporting, have apparently been deleted entirely outside of independent archives.
When visitors attempt to visit MTV.com/news, they are instead redirected to MTV’s home page. That page, a reflection of how much the once mighty pop culture juggernaut has changed, features marketing for “Teen Mom” and the network’s other reality shows.
News content on CMT.com, which is also owned by Paramount, has been deleted as well.
Representatives for Paramount didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.
MTV News launched in 1987 with a weekly show hosted on the then-music video channel by Kurt Loder. It was soon expanded into nightly installments and continued as a hugely featured aspect of MTV programming during the 1990s, but with MTV’s sudden shift in focus to reality programming in the early 2000s, it was relegated to occasional late-night airings and eventually pulled.
The news operation continued with an online presence, including a notable rebrand in 2016 in an attempt to compete with the likes of Buzzfeed, followed a year later by an abrupt about-face and the termination of nearly its entire staff.
Paramount pulled the plug on the MTV News organization for good in May 2023 as part of a company-wide restructuring that included laying off 25% of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios/Paramount Media staff.