On Tuesday, May 9th, 2023, the announcement that shook many a Gen Xer and many a Millennial to their cores happened: MTV News would be shuttered down after 36 years as a result of cuts made by Paramount Global.
In its peak era of the late 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, MTV News had a front row seat to the world of politics, celebrity drama, pop culture, and issues affecting the youth of America that wasn’t captured anywhere else in a respectable and relatable way. For many years, its correspondents appeared on MTV and their sister channels such as MTV2 for 10-to-the-hour news briefs and on TRL for news updates during the show’s original 1998-2008 run.
Rolling Stone editor Kurt Loder put MTV News on the map in the 1980s, beginning with The Week In Rock show inaugurating in 1987 that later expanded into a full news department. During its 36 years in existence, MTV News birthed legends of journalism that many of its viewers during that era of MTV will recognize: the aforementioned Loder, John Norris, Tabitha Soren, SuChin Pak, Chris Connelly, Sway Calloway, Serena Altschul, Gideon Yago, and more.
The memories of MTV News will remain even after its closure.
Earlier this week, I posted the closing of MTV News on my Substack blog The JGibson Report called “RIP MTV News.”
From my Substack piece:
This news will bring tears of sadness to those who grew up on MTV during the 1980s to the 2000s among Gen Xers and Millennials: MTV News is no more, as Paramount Global announced large layoffs, including the closing of the MTV News division.
MTV News birthed several legends in journalism over its 36 years, such as Kurt Loder, Gideon Yago, SuChin Pak, John Norris, Serena Altschul, Tabitha Soren, Chris Connelly, Sway, and more.
Alex Weprin at THR (05.09.2023):
Thirty-six years after MTV News was created to expand the stable of programming that defined the cable channel MTV, it is no more.
MTV News was shuttered this week as part of larger layoffs at parent company Paramount Global.
What launched as a single show in 1987 (The Week in Rock, led by correspondent Kurt Loder) eventually became a bona fide news outlet for Gen X and older millennials who found that traditional TV programming on the broadcast networks and CNN wasn’t cutting it.
Correspondents like Loder, Tabitha Soren, SuChin Pak, Gideon Yago, Alison Stewart and others covered music, pop culture, politics and other topics with an eye toward the younger generation that was tuned to MTV, rather than the network evening newscasts.
Along the way, MTV News created some pop culture moments itself, perhaps none more so than in 1994, when President Clinton appeared on MTV’s Enough Is Enough, a town hall addressing violence in America.
Stephanie Holland at The Root (05.09.2023):
For Gen X, in the 1990s, there was one crucial place to get the most important news of the day: MTV. If you’re only familiar with current day MTV, I know that sounds crazy. But once upon a time, MTV News was the place for unbiased, reasonable stories on issues that young people were genuinely concerned about. Kurt Loder was Gen X’s Walter Cronkite. He’s the one who told us about Kurt Cobain, Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur’s deaths. “Choose or Lose” demanded that we pay attention to politics. Loder; John Norris; Tabitha Soren; Alison Stewart; SuChin Pak; Sway Calloway; and Chris Connelly gave us a diverse news team long before it was the trendy way to get viewers. These correspondents didn’t talk down to their young audience, they informed us about important issues and made it easy for us to understand why we should care.
[...]
Those people who are doing everything they can to change this dumpster fire of a world we currently live in, took their first steps into activism thanks to MTV News. It started with Loder hosting The Week in Rock, but as the network and its programming evolved, so did its news division. As it became clear that politics was something the network could no longer avoid, MTV made sure to set itself apart from mainstream outlets by specifically tackling issues that its young audience cared about. Climate change, the environment, poverty, gender identity, sexuality and race were all prominently featured before the rest of the media world caught up.
Nicholas Brooks at CBR:
Recently, MTV has been known for its reality shows, original dramas and, of course, music. However, the result of modern MTV came from a long period of evolution that began with the original channel in 1981. During that time, Music Television focused on just that and as the years progressed, more music-based programming like Beavis and Butt-Head came to be. But in 1987, the landscape of the channel changed forever with the debut of MTV News.
MTV News' primary focus, upon its debut, was the news that surrounded the music world. That said, it wasn't the only news as the channel focused just as much on world events as well. It was, possibly for the first time, the perfect news source that blended entertainment and world news seamlessly. But sadly, that era has come to a close with the announcement that MTV News would be no more. As a result, now is the perfect time to explore the legacy of the programming block and, most importantly, how it changed the landscape of news. More specifically, how it managed to bridge the gap between youth and politics in a way that took the "boring" aspect out of the political profession.
On the Friday night edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, former MTV News correspondent John Norris spoke the plain truth about how MTV News (and MTV in general) became a shell of itself beginning in the 2010s (though in MTV’s case, it was earlier than that).
From the 05.12.2023 edition of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour: