Originally appeared on E! Online
There are sure to be more people saying, “I want my MTV” in the near future.
The world’s first 24-hour music broadcaster is set to shut down five of its UK channels including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live on Dec. 31 of this year, according to the BBC.
The outlet notes that flagship channel MTV HD will remain on air, broadcasting reality shows like Naked Dating UK and Geordie Shore.
E! News has reached out to MTV for comment.
MTV first launched in the U.S. in 1981 with a focus on showing the most popular music videos—the first one to air was The Buggle’s “Video Killed the Radio Star.” MTV Europe launched six years later in 1987, and by 1997 the U.K. officially got their own channel.
After all these years, saying goodbye to MTV U.K. will certainly be difficult for some, including former MTV video jockey Simone Angel who admitted to the BBC that she was “really sad, and I’m a little bit in disbelief, and I know it’s been a long time coming.”
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“We need to support these artists and we all need to dance again and listen to music,” the 53-year-old continued. “And I know we do that online in our own little bubbles, but MTV was the place where everything came together. So it really does break my heart.”
The TV personality also reflected on the early years of MTV in the U.K., joking that it was a “wild” time.
“It was like being on a school trip without any teachers,” she shared. “We had so much fun.”
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Plus, the station and its offshoots played an important role in people’s lives in the ‘90s, as Simone noted, “MTV Europe was really the forerunner to the internet.”
“We were the most widespread TV channel in the world at that point,” she added. “We had between 100 and 150 million viewers.”
And although she knows that it’s important “to move with the times,” that doesn’t mean she’s not sad about the end of an era.
“To this day, it’s one of the most recognisable brands in the world,” Simone said. “Why on earth throw that away? It’s not thrown away, but it’s just reality TV. That’s not what MTV is or should be.”
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
