MTV Bringing the Music Back as It Seeks New Partners

Can MTV bring the music back? David Ellison seems to be betting that it can.

The Paramount CEO is keen to revive the once-iconic brand, and is talking to major companies and music industry figures about strategic partnerships, including an economic stake in MTV, per Bloomberg. Such a strategic deal could give it expanded access to music rights or artists.

When MTV launched 45 years ago, it debuted with a music video of The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

It was a statement about the state of the music business, with MTV carving out a niche as the home for music on TV sets, and helping to create the music video format, which dominated its lineup (alongside other music-related programming) for the next few decades.

Now, of course, music videos are as popular than ever, but their home is YouTube (and to a lesser extent, TikTok, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Music), while MTV shut down MTV News, and has more recently been a repository for aging reality TV shows like Jersey Shore, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Catfish and Ridiculousness.

With Paramount canceling Ridiculousness last year, the brand has been preparing for a wholesale reboot, and now we have a sense of what Ellison has in mind: Bringing back the music.

The music, of course, never left entirely. The MTV Video Music Awards remain one of the few cultural touchpoints for the music industry, and attracts the biggest stars in the business (even if the viewership has largely migrated to its simulcast on CBS, and Paramount+ on streaming).

But other than that, the music has mostly been silenced, and that appears poised to change. That is a big reason why, around New Year’s Eve, posts went viral on Instagram, TikTok, X and LinkedIn about MTV shutting down. It wasn’t (the company was just shutting down a few ancillary music-only channels in the U.K.), but the reaction from people underscored what everyone seems to realize: The brand’s best days were in its past.

Ellison seems to be heeding the call by Tom Freston, the legendary media executive who helped build MTV to be the powerhouse that it was at its peak.

Freston told The Hollywood Reporter in November that he had dinner with Ellison and some of his senior executives to discuss the brand.

“I had a meeting with David and Jeff Shell and a couple people,” Freston recalled. “They had a lovely dinner — me and [former colleagues] Judy McGrath and Doug Herzog and Jason Hirschhorn just before they made the purchase. It was due diligence on their part. They were like, ‘You guys were there in the golden age. We don’t know what’s happened?’ I said, ‘First of all, when they sawed the ‘music television’ off the bottom of the logo, they lost me.’ But all the music people had left and MTV didn’t have any real value as a music brand. I don’t know if you can resurrect it, but I think you might be able to.”

MTV the cable channel may or may not survive the entertainment business’ perilous transition to streaming, but MTV the brand has a shot.

“One, they have a huge library of shows. The Unpluggeds and some of the reality shows were pretty good,” Freston added. “They also have a huge library of music videos and MTV News — everything that happened from 1980 on. So, why couldn’t you do some kind of digital curation thing? Anyway, I’m really happy to see Ellison there. I mean, if someone was going to buy Paramount, the Ellisons got my vote.”

And bringing a music publisher like Warner Music Group or Universal into the fold, or perhaps even a streaming player like Spotify or Amazon Music, could help resurrect a cable brand that had seemingly been left for dead.

Executives at NBCUniversal frame Bravo as a brand that represents a particular type of lowbrow-highbrow reality TV, and that even if the channel vanished, the brand could live on. Paramount executives clearly think they can pull those same levers at the former MTV Networks cable channels.

But the exact strategy, and what partners might want to buy in, will determine that trajectory.