MTV News to shut down as Paramount Media Networks slashes US workforce

May 10, 2023 7:55 AM

A major Paramount division announced Tuesday it will shutter MTV News and slash its US workforce by 25%, bringing to an end the iconic music video network’s news division that once covered a range of issues from pop culture to politics and became a household name for Generation X and Millennial adolescents.

Ryan Broderick points out "The MTV News model — informing people who were already there for entertainment purposes — would go on to define pretty much every single 'social publisher' of the last 15 years. ... a certain attitude about how to deliver news content is hopefully finally ending. And it’s a good thing." (archive.today link)

posted by Etrigan (58 comments total)

.

MTV News was how I found out Kurt Cobain died.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:12 AM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]

Please tell me they still used the Megadeth bass line for Peace Sells but Who's Buying? for all this time as their intro/sting music. That's honestly about all I remember about MTV News. I do recall some of the hosts, but don't recall anything they reported on.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

There was Kurt Loder reporting on 'Courtney Love is very intoxicated and harassing Madonna,' and 'Jewel, a literal teenager, misused a word in a poem.'

Probably some other stuff too, but those are the ones that stuck with me.
posted by box at 8:24 AM on May 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

TIL MTV still exists. That’s what cutting the cable cord does to a person. Do they still have Kennedy and Martha what’s her name?
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:29 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

MTV News (and MTV in general) was such a big part of my young teen life in the early 90s. I was incredibly rural, incredibly closeted, fearful of sex and plague and the present and the future. My family got cable a few months before my 12th birthday and, boom. I felt like my world expanded. I also, unfortunately, was introduced to the vocabulary of coolness as a metric for worthiness that would take me a decade (or longer) to shake off. So, yes, I absolutely agree with Broderick's pull quote above—I am nostalgic, grateful, weary, and regretful, all at once.

Quite a notable achievement that Loder arrived in culture to the extent he did. I still love the line from Swedish band Whale, in a diss track, saying "yeah I told her that she smells like Kurt Loder."
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 8:42 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

TIL MTV still exists. That’s what cutting the cable cord does to a person. Do they still have Kennedy and Martha what’s her name?

Wow, I haven't even thought about Kennedy for probably more than 25 years.
posted by drstrangelove at 8:45 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

The MTV News model — informing people who were already there for entertainment purposes — would go on to define pretty much every single 'social publisher' of the last 15 years.

This is, broadly put, every traditional U.S. news delivery model, except of the news-specific networks. The newspaper wants to sell to people looking for the funnies; local news comes in between reruns and the new...whatever they air in the prime-time block now.

Kurt Loder turned out to be a libertarian creep, and he wasn't so nice in that Jewel interview, to be sure, but it's kind of weird to act as if it wasn't a professionally published book by a professional performer. It's not like he went onto some random teenage girl's GeoCities website and pulled her personal poetry for criticism.
posted by praemunire at 8:46 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Do they still have Kennedy and Martha what’s her name?

MTV has hasn't had anything on their actual television channel in years besides reruns of Ridiculousness, Catfish the TV Show, and 16 and Pregnant. And I mean like 22 straight hours of Ridiculousness with an hour of the other two during "prime time".

It's not like he went onto some random teenage girl's GeoCities website and pulled her personal poetry for criticism.

I think a lot of this is people retroactively being upset with Loder and others as it's turned out how much of "Jewel" was just older people forcing a semi-homeless teenager and then women in her early 20s to be their performing monkey and cash cow.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:56 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Kennedy was first introduced to libertarianism when Kurt Loder suggested she read Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
posted by HeroZero at 8:57 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

TIL MTV still exists.

Yeah, but it pretty much has little to do with music anymore. Kinda how Food Network is now just the Game Show Network with gravy.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:59 AM on May 10, 2023 [13 favorites]

Maybe they can fill that time slot with music videos.
posted by TedW at 8:59 AM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

Maybe they can fill that time slot with music videos.

Yeah, right.

I remember when MTV 2 began. They ran ads for it basically saying that it would only be for music videos. It didn't take long before episodes of The Real World, etc were starting to play on there.
posted by drstrangelove at 9:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was working at MTV when MTV2 started. As you can imagine, there were TVs in all the reception areas, hallways, offices etc, tuned to MTV or MTV2 (or VH1 or Nickelodeon, depending what floor you were on - they were separate companies under the Viacom umbrella and shared some things, like tech support, where I was). Anyway, for the first few weeks of MTV2, you could call up someone and request a video and they would invariably play it in the next couple of hours, which was cool. MTV had started it's slide away from music videos and we all thought that MTV2 was the new hope.
I know nothing about Kurt Loder or his political views, but in my interactions with him he was never anything less than gracious and charming, which can't be said for a lot of people when the IT nerd turns up at your desk to help. He really didn't want to give up his typewriter though.
posted by conifer at 9:24 AM on May 10, 2023 [21 favorites]

Martha what’s her name?

Martha Quinn... do not disrespect the queen
posted by kokaku at 9:24 AM on May 10, 2023 [22 favorites]

I remember when MTV 2 began. They ran ads for it basically saying that it would only be for music videos. It didn't take long before episodes of The Real World, etc were starting to play on there.

What I remember about the MTV2 launch is that Comcast put it on a premium tier, so I would have had to shell-out even more to watch it. As MTV itself (on the basic tier) had become pretty much unwatchable by then, this ended whatever interest I had left for anything MTV.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:30 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here's a flashback to 1996 when Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, and Crow T. Robot riffed a segment of MTV News to promote Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.
posted by Servo5678 at 9:43 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

A few years ago, MTV News hired Jessica Hopper and Hanif Abdurraqib in an attempt to rebrand into a Pitchfork/Stereogum-type music news site. This rebranding was cut after Chance the Rapper got a negative review killed. For MTV to kill the whole MTV News brand is disappointing, but not surprising.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:49 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

There was Kurt Loder reporting on 'Courtney Love is very intoxicated and harassing Madonna'

Oh come on, you can't say this without posting the video. This was hilarious to 17-year-old me, but I'm at work and can't rewatch it to see if it's as funny as it was in my memory.
posted by pxe2000 at 9:51 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

> Wow, I haven't even thought about Kennedy for probably more than 25 years.

kennedy (who really should change her name to "wait, that kennedy?") is now a fox news host, with precisely the political views one would expect from a fox news host.

look on your works, ye gen-xers, and despair.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:51 AM on May 10, 2023 [15 favorites]

I'm sad to see less journalism in the world but I'm honestly surprised it took this long. Most of my friends' kids are in their teenage years now and I can't think of a one that watches MTV for music let alone news. In the YouTube era, MTV feels completely irrelevant.

And seconding that Kennedy became a loathsome right wing host.
posted by Candleman at 10:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Martha Quinn... do not disrespect the queen

Yeah...were you ever in an LL Cool J music video?
posted by praemunire at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

.

I think it's mostly for my youth, though. (And wow, Kennedy. What a bummer.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:39 AM on May 10, 2023

kennedy schmennedy.
Where's the MTV News love for normie redhead Tabitha 'Choose or Lose' Soren?
Serena Altschul and her skinny 90s eyebrows?
Or for a deep cut, the one you might have confused for Terry Farrell with big hair, Carolyne Heldman?
posted by bartleby at 11:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

I didn't know that MTV News was still a thing, either. I spent so many hours watching MTV during my high school years and afterward and that picture of Earth with the four typewriter heads coming up and typing NEWS with the sound effects is as familiar as my own heartbeat. Loder was a quality journalist, with a couple of pretty good books to his name if I recall.

It's hard to separate the VJs from the News people in my head sometimes. Tabitha Soren is a name that sticks out to me as a news person. Martha and Kennedy were never news people.
posted by hippybear at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I honestly can't even remember the last time I ever saw - much less actually watched - MTV.

It has to be as far back as the early 2000s or something, and even then I don't think it was actually MTV but it was probably VH1's Pop Up Video show.
posted by loquacious at 11:23 AM on May 10, 2023

RIP to a key player in the conspiracy to brainwash the youth of America with pop music (source)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:24 AM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Tabitha Soren is a name that sticks out to me as a news person.

And let's give full credit to S.F. Bay Area resident Soren for a successful second act as a fine art photographer.
posted by JDC8 at 11:53 AM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

Funnily enough something randomly popped up in my social media feed the other day about Kurt Loder turning 78 years old this month…..in case you needed a reason to feel time flying by…..
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:18 PM on May 10, 2023

Quinn's 64 tomorrow. Loder had fewer than 15 years on most of the VJs, but his aged-elder schtick was impeccable.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:12 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Loder wasn't ever a VJ.

Quinn was never on the MTV News team.
posted by hippybear at 1:13 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Huh. I'm an Xennial, right on the cusp, and I cannot with confidence say that I have ever heard of MTV News before today.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

the line between gen-x and millennial is largely determined by what media were primary for you when you were growing up. i am guessing that you're on the side of xennial that grew up on the Internet and never really interacted much with anything on cable television.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:31 PM on May 10, 2023

also and unrelatedly this thread is giving me a profound thirst for an ok soda
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:33 PM on May 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

I grew up on Nickelodeon and old science fiction paperbacks. I didn't get on the Internet until I was 13.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:34 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

This was my first real workplace after college — the full name of the department was MTV News & Documentaries (‘News & Docs’). In the early 2000s I took what I thought was a temporary gig and ended up staying there for several years.

This was during a time when some key producers within the department were really pushing to cover events and issues beyond the music world. Working mainly on the Docs side of things I had limited involvement with the News folks, though I did help with some of Gideon Yago’s Iraq War coverage (he seemed like a good egg).

I only worked with Kurt Loder once, so the best story I have about him is the company-wide email he sent out telling everyone how awesome LimeWire was for downloading music, but urging caution about doing it on work computers.
posted by theory at 2:39 PM on May 10, 2023 [12 favorites]

MTV News: you... will no longer... hear it first.
posted by knile at 3:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Welp, I guess this is the end of chicks for free.
posted by srboisvert at 3:51 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

I remember seeing Serena Altschul's work on True Life and thinking that it was inevitable that she would eventually end up on 60 Minutes. But this was back when the average correspondant's ago on the CBS show was best described as "near-death" so her career went elsewhere.
posted by dances with hamsters at 4:05 PM on May 10, 2023

And seconding that Kennedy became a loathsome right wing host.

I mean, she was soft-peddling a conservative line even back on MTV, so her being a loathsome FoxNews wag shouldn’t surprise anyone.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:22 PM on May 10, 2023

RIP MTV News, I guess. I dunno. All I remember is Kurt Loder’s fawning “interviews” with Madonna. Gag me with a spoon.

Tabitha was cool though. John Norris? Is that right? He was cool too, I suppose.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:03 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

They did bring us political convention correspondent Dave Mustaine.
posted by box at 5:10 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Doodle doodle dee, wubba… wubba wubba
posted by schoolgirl report at 5:20 PM on May 10, 2023

I'm not much of a nostalgist, so I'm kinda sticking on the part about cutting the workforce. That kind of seems to be happening to streamers a lot these days. I feel like that's maybe a bad omen.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:21 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Chalk me in the “I can’t believe that they still had a news department” column. Given how they’ve so famously abandoned music videos in favor of cheap reality, this is like finding out that you can still send telegrams from Western Union counters.
posted by dr_dank at 7:52 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Martha Quinn... do not disrespect the queen

She still has a (probably prerecorded) show on my local 80s+ radio station.

Yeah, but it pretty much has little to do with music anymore.

Well, they still do the MTV Video Music Awards, but that's probably about the extent of it, outside a block of Classic Videos at 1AM or whatnot.
posted by gtrwolf at 8:44 PM on May 10, 2023

Imagine if MTV were still doing music videos 24/7. It wouldn't still be the cultural force it was back in those days, but it could still move the needle on a lot of musicians that might not otherwise get traction. Is there ANY source for a stream of human curated music videos these days? I haven't found one.
posted by hippybear at 8:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Is there ANY source for a stream of human curated music videos these days? I haven't found one.

I guess Vevo is the closest thing I've found to a curated streaming service, available on many networks and devices. Their YouTube channel has a set of playlists that approximate some MTV-style video programming (including Top 10 lists, TikTok faves, AAPI music for this month and a Weird Al takeover):

YouTube Main

DSCVR for new artists

Global Playlists

Pop Video Weekly
posted by JDC8 at 10:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not much of a nostalgist, so I'm kinda sticking on the part about cutting the workforce. That kind of seems to be happening to streamers a lot these days. I feel like that's maybe a bad omen.

In fact, as a little crosscurrent, Adam Conover has been saying lots of cool things about the WGA strike, particularly about how the studios are trying to screw writers, including Netflix in a big way, and these workforce cutting stories really rhyme for me with that. Companies, especially large ones, are doing better than ever, and they get rewarded for cutting headcount. Eventually, they grow headcount again, but with more threats to the employee's bottom line.

Watch MTV reimplement News in a few years in the mold of Charlemagne Tha God's current ventures.

That said, I always thought it seemed obvious that Kurt Loder was working in some restricted fashion. He's as legit as they come, barring any sellout criticisms, but he was in NYC in the 70s and was a major Rolling Stone writer through the 80s. As square as he might be, I think he has skills beyond what he was able to do under the cosh of Viacom. I don't Stan for him, but credit where due.
posted by rhizome at 11:09 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Imagine what MTV could have been had it embraced music from all over the planet. I am looking at Brasil, the Caribbean and Africa. In a few years it morphed into a void.
posted by DJZouke at 5:14 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am in maybe the perfect pocket of GenX for this to resonate. Kurt Cobain died a couple months before I graduated high school,while I was on a last ditch college tour of back-ups because none of my first choices would offer any financial aid. I specifically remember getting the Kurt news from Kurt Loder on an MTV news breaking clip while I was watching videos in a Baltimore hotel room instead of joking my mother and stepfather for a historical tour.
I feel like I got a lot of news from MTV in high school. Most of my friends were the kind of nerds that would talk about whether we thought Kurt Loder was even trying to be a good interviewer (no) or to what degree televised music news counted as “real journalism” (undecided but less fun than most of the zines we obsessed over at the time).

I spent most of my youth (aged 6-19)watching mtv. By sophomore year of college 95/96, I’d moved into an apartment and cable was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I lost track of MTV and years later, when my access resurfaced during the TRL years I was no longer its target demographic. Save the occasional Jackass episode, I kind of forgot about it all together.

The most surprising thing about this post is learning that MTV news still existed at all.
posted by thivaia at 6:03 AM on May 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Anyway, for the first few weeks of MTV2, you could call up someone and request a video and they would invariably play it in the next couple of hours, which was cool.

This is impressive, in its own way. I recall in Canada, MuchMusic had an all-request show which worked thus: you sent a letter or postcard to the good people at 299 Queen West requesting a song and then watched on Sunday (between 4:00 and 5:00, if my memory serves me well) to see if it turned up. That was it.

If you explained to teenage me that in four decades* I’d be writing a comment about this arrangement on a handheld portable device (technically a phone) and I could also use it to watch, say, the Bluebells’ video for “Young at Heart”** whenever I wanted to , I’d be flabbergasted.

*Technically not quite four decades; MuchMusic launched in August 1984. Where have you gone, Erica Ehm? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

**And the same thing with Bugs Bunny cartoons on demand? I can watch “Hillbilly Hare” whenever I feel like? The future sounds awesome!!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:15 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

MTV News: you... will no longer... hear it first.

This post immediately conjured (the real version of) this line, as said by Beavis. Along with "I'll be damned, it's Dave Navarro," one of the things I'll likely be muttering on my deathbed.

ba ba da BA BA YOU hear it first. babababababababa...
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:11 PM on May 11, 2023

I mean, they're making new episodes of Beavis And Butthead, so we're living in a topsy-turvy world.
posted by hippybear at 12:53 PM on May 11, 2023

Beavis and Butt-Head are still laughing at Tabitha Soren’s name.
posted by dr_dank at 3:49 PM on May 11, 2023

Tabitha Soren is still wondering who ‘the loneliest monk’ is.
posted by box at 4:32 PM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Wow. I did not know any of that stuff about Jewel.
posted by Faintdreams at 5:02 PM on May 11, 2023

Also, Alison Stewart stayed in the news industry after MTV News- CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and NPR. She currently has a show, All of It, on WNYC.
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 3:55 PM on May 13, 2023

"Yeah...were you ever in an LL Cool J music video?" - praemunire

"As a 19-year-old college student at NYU, Soren appeared in the 1987 music video for "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)" "
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 4:00 PM on May 13, 2023