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Last year MTV News was shuttered amid layoffs at parent company Paramount. And last week, former MTV News editor (and Stereogum contributor) Patrick Hosken noticed that the music publication’s website had been taken down, erasing decades of celebrated music journalism. Now the Internet Archive has come to the rescue with a searchable MTV News database.
The database has 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news dating back to the website’s inception in 1996. Paramount also deleted content from its CMT, Comedy Central, and TV Land websites. “As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we have introduced more streamlined versions of our sites, driving fans to Paramount+ to watch their favorite shows,” a Paramount Global rep said in a statement. You can find the MTV News database here.
Last month, Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. (which controls Paramount Global) called off merger talks with David Ellison’s Skydance Media (which produces movie franchises like Mission: Impossible and Star Trek) and is now reportedly looking to cut $500 million in annual costs while it explores selling parts of its media empire. It’s unclear if Paramount plans to sell MTV or its other cable channels like Nickelodeon, but today it was revealed that the company may offload BET for $1.6 billion to that network’s CEO and CC Capital’s Chinh Chu. Meanwhile, after Barry Diller’s IAC emerged yesterday as a possible new buyer of Paramount, the merger with Skydance is apparently happening after all.
Last year Paramount Global’s long-term debt was $14.6 billion and a few weeks ago its stock hit an all time low. Despite a faltering cable business, however, Paramount also owns prized assets CBS and Paramount Pictures. It is also seeking to merge its Paramount+ with another streaming service like Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max.
MTV was launched in 1981 by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, which was sold to a collective that included Paramount, then called Viacom, in 1983. Redstone’s father Sumner’s National Amusements took control of Viacom in 1987. MTV dropped “Music Television” from its logo in 2010, but it continued to produce music journalism until MTV News shut down. The MTV Video Music Awards returns for its 40th anniversary on Sept. 10 while the MTV Movie & TV Awards is not happening this year.