If you’ve been on the Internet the past few weeks, you probably heard that MTV went off the air last Wednesday, New Year’s Eve, at midnight, after 44 years. It’s a sad moment in cultural history, and also an interesting one, in that it absolutely did not happen at all. MTV is still right there, and the idea that it isn’t is just a by-product of our chaotic information environment. To bring you up to speed, here is a quick MTV FAQ.
I’m so sad! MTV went off the air at midnight this past New Year’s Eve, after 44 years!
No, it didn’t.
But I read that it was going to!
No, you didn’t.
I did! It was in the news!
No, it wasn’t. Here is what actually happened: A few months ago, Paramount made the decision to shut down the suite of supplemental music-only channels MTV had introduced in the UK and Australia in the late aughts and early 2010s—MTV Music, MTV ’80s, MTV ’90s, MTV Live, and Club MTV—on New Year’s Eve. So those channels went off the air in the UK and Australia.
But MTV is still on the air?
MTV is still on the air in the UK, and Australia, and all over the world, and here in the United States. In fact, its supplemental music-only channels—MTV Classic and MTV Live—are still alive and well on U.S. cable systems. Providers like Tubi and Pluto still run even more 24/7 music FAST channels like MTV Spankin’ New, MTV Biggest Pop, and MTV Flow Latino.
So why did I think it was going off the air?
At the time of that MTV UK/Australia announcement, the reporting on this story was mostly pretty accurate. But the headlines had “MTV” and “GOING OFF THE AIR” and “NEW YEAR’S EVE” in them, and the less explosive facts were buried much deeper into the body of the articles than anyone bothers to read anymore—which is to say, in the first paragraph. So the story became “MTV GOING OFF THE AIR NEW YEAR’S EVE.” TikTok and Instagram news-aggregator sites ran with it, and all of a sudden adult human beings started to believe MTV was going off the air because they saw it on, like, @PopBarf420. And people posted tributes. Lots of them. Even people who should have known better.
But not, like, Pauly Shore, right?
But, I mean, MTV is not the way I remember it anymore.
No, it isn’t. Right now it’s Rob Dyrdek’s Ridiculousness and Pitch Perfect 2 and Jersey Shore: Pauly D and Vinny Enter a Senior Care Facility. Nobody is saying MTV is what it was when you were 15. But it is still on the air, it is still profitable, and amid the Paramount/Skydance merger, new owner David Ellison said he’s not planning on spinning the channel off, indicating that he believes what we all hope, which is that there’s life in the old girl yet.
So after midnight on New Year’s Eve, when MTV didn’t go off the air in the United States, people probably stopped going on the Internet and saying that it had, right?
No, they didn’t. People had their posts written, and engagement does not care what is true and what is not. The tributes continued. In fact, they got even weirder. Like, look at this AI-bituary for MTV, posted on January 4, four full days after the network demonstrably did not die.
Oh my God. What’s your favorite part? It’s mournful Xzibit for me.
I have to go with the Celebrity Deathmatch guys. To have that intensity of emotion, given all that they have seen? That’s how you know you’re dealing with something serious. Really, the entire thing is a masterpiece. It’s pure camp, which I didn’t think our culture was capable of creating anymore. I hope nobody was using the medium-size lake that got drained to facilitate its creation, and I’m so glad the guy just went ahead and did it, rather than turn on his television to see whether MTV was still on.
Please, you think this guy still has cable?
Maybe not, but the mom he lives with does.
Fair.
It’s also important to point out that most of the examples of “peak MTV” on display in this AI nightmare could be and have been used as evidence that MTV had died. For every 15-year-old watching Pimp My Ride, there was a 20-year-old complaining that MTV was over because it didn’t show Jackass anymore. When that guy was 15, there was a 20-year-old saying Jackass lacked the nuance of Beavis & Butthead, and when that guy was 15, some 20-year-old was bitching that The Real World wasn’t as real as it used to be, and when that guy was 15, everyone older than him was furious that MTV wasn’t exclusively music videos anymore. MTV debuted in August 1981, and in October 1981 somebody probably said MTV was dead because it didn’t play as much REO Speedwagon as it used to. “MTV sucks these days” is as reliable a complaint as “Saturday Night Live sucks these days.” That’s what happens to a thing that’s constantly evolving.
I would like to know more. Is there an entertaining and well-researched podcast about the evolution of MTV?
Yes, there is! It’s called Who Killed The Video Star: The Story of MTV, and I can vouch for its quality because I made it.
Ultimately, MTV still being on the air is good news, so why do I feel uneasy about this whole situation?
Because it is a straight-up five-alarm information catastrophe that this many people can be this taken in by a story this false and this easily disprovable. There is some high-stakes shit going on in the world right now, and it’s happening as newsrooms shrink, once-reliable search engines point us toward AI nonsense, and news aggregators have no obligation to check their facts. It’s harder and harder to tell truth from fiction, and fewer and fewer of us are bothering to try. If it’s frustrating where and how we’re getting our news on whether MTV is still on the air, it is terrifying that that’s also where and how we’re getting our news on whether we’re dropping bombs on Venezuela. Our media literacy is going to have to come up, fast, or we are cooked like the Christmas goose.
Can you end this post on a lighter note?
Let’s find out together. Here goes: As scary and cringe as it has been, maybe the fact that this many people took the time to openly mourn MTV means there’s a need for it. Its evolution is definitely in a dormant phase at the moment, but maybe this all goes to show that there’s a void in the culture that only the next version of MTV can fill. May it happen! May the network continue to evolve, and may its next iteration infuriate anyone over the age of 15.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.esquire.com ’
