{"id":2229247,"date":"2026-01-10T04:51:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T04:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2229247"},"modified":"2026-01-10T04:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T04:51:36","slug":"mtv-bringing-the-music-back-as-it-seeks-new-partners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/mtv-bringing-the-music-back-as-it-seeks-new-partners\/","title":{"rendered":"MTV Bringing the Music Back as It Seeks New Partners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tCan <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/mtv\/\" id=\"auto-tag_mtv_1\" data-tag=\"mtv\">MTV<\/a> bring the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/music\/\" id=\"auto-tag_music_1\" data-tag=\"music\">music<\/a> back? David Ellison seems to be betting that it can.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/t\/paramount\/\" id=\"auto-tag_paramount_1\" data-tag=\"paramount\">Paramount<\/a> 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, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-01-08\/paramount-skydance-seeks-strategic-partners-to-help-reinvent-mtv\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">per Bloomberg<\/a>. Such a strategic deal could give it expanded access to music rights or artists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWhen MTV launched 45 years ago, it debuted with a music video of The Buggles\u2019 \u201cVideo Killed the Radio Star.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIt 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.<\/p>\n<p><iframe id=\"pmc-polymarket\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" title=\"pmc-polymarket\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.polymarket.com\/market.html?market=will-sinners-win-best-motion-picture-drama-at-the-83rd-golden-globes&amp;features=volume&amp;theme=light&amp;width=Infinity&amp;features=volume&amp;theme=light&amp;height=170pxl\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 170px;margin-top: 15px !important; border: 0px;&#10;&#9;padding: 0px;\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tNow, 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 <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/mtv-news-shut-down-paramount-layoffs-kurt-loder-1235483098\/\">shut down MTV News<\/a>, and has more recently been a repository for aging reality TV shows like <em>Jersey Shore<\/em>, <em>RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race<\/em>, <em>Catfish<\/em> and<em> Ridiculousness<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWith Paramount <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-news\/ridiculousness-canceled-mtv-rob-dyrdek-1236415013\/\">canceling <em>Ridiculousness<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe music, of course, never left entirely. The <em>MTV Video Music Awards <\/em>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 <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/business\/business-news\/cbs-simulcast-vmas-death-of-mtv-1236181020\/\">simulcast on CBS<\/a>, and Paramount+ on streaming).<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBut other than that, the music has mostly been silenced, and that appears poised to change. That is a big reason why, around New Year\u2019s Eve, posts went viral on Instagram, TikTok, X and LinkedIn about MTV shutting down. It wasn\u2019t (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\u2019s best days were in its past.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tEllison 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFreston <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/tv\/tv-features\/mtv-tom-freston-book-unplugged-sex-clubs-sumner-redstone-david-ellison-1236428178\/\">told <em>The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> in November <\/a>that he had dinner with Ellison and some of his senior executives to discuss the brand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cI had a meeting with David and Jeff Shell and a couple people,\u201d Freston recalled. \u201cThey had a lovely dinner \u2014 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, \u2018You guys were there in the golden age. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s happened?\u2019 I said, \u2018First of all, when they sawed the \u2018music television\u2019 off the bottom of the logo, they lost me.\u2019 But all the music people had left and MTV didn\u2019t have any real value as a music brand. I don\u2019t know if you can resurrect it, but I think you might be able to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMTV the cable channel may or may not survive the entertainment business\u2019 perilous transition to streaming, but MTV the brand has a shot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cOne, they have a huge library of shows. The<em>\u00a0Unpluggeds<\/em>\u00a0and some of the reality shows were pretty good,\u201d Freston added. \u201cThey also have a huge library of music videos and\u00a0<em>MTV News<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 everything that happened from 1980 on. So, why couldn\u2019t you do some kind of digital curation thing? Anyway, I\u2019m really happy to see Ellison there. I mean, if someone was going to buy Paramount, the Ellisons got my vote.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tAnd 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tExecutives 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/  a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBut the exact strategy, and what partners might want to buy in, will determine that trajectory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2229248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[307878,21800,309230],"class_list":["post-2229247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-mtv","tag-music","tag-paramount"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/MTV-Bringing-the-Music-Back-as-It-Seeks-New-Partners.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2229247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2229249,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229247\/revisions\/2229249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2229248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2229247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2229247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2229247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}