You’ve probably seen a variation of this news on social media over the past few days: MTV officially shut down on New Year’s Eve, ending their final broadcast the same way the network started: With the clip “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.
But those posts are misinformed. It’s New Year’s Day 2026, and MTV is still around. Granted, today the channel is playing a marathon of “The Big Bang Theory” sitcom repeats, so your interpretation of “MTV is still around” may vary.
Here’s where the confusion is coming from: On New Year’s Eve, Paramount Skydance did indeed shut down several MTV-branded music channels in the U.K. According to a source, “MTV’s specialist music channels in the UK will no longer operate as linear channels. The flagship MTV UK channel will continue to broadcast… Paramount is reviewing and adjusting its international Pay TV portfolio, given shifts in audience behavior towards streaming and digital platforms.”
As for the U.S., the existing MTV channels will continue to broadcast without change — including MTV and MTV2. MTV hasn’t been “Music Television” for a long time, but the network does still program some digital music channels in the U.S., including “MTV Classic” (playing retro music videos from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s), “MTV Live” (which runs current music videos, as well as other music programming from the Paramount library) and a collection of MTV-branded FAST channels (“MTV Biggest Pop,” “MTV Spankin’ New,” “Yo! MTV” and “MTV Flow Latino”), which play contemporary music videos on Pluto TV.
Of course, fans of MTV’s golden 1980s, 1990s and 2000s era still look nostalgically at when the flagship network really was about music. In those days, MTV’s programming consisted of music videos and music-oriented series like “Headbanger’s Ball,” “120 Minutes” and “Yo! MTV Raps.” Later, “TRL” was an afternoon staple for an entire generation of kids.
But in recent years, MTV has focused on reality programming — which currently includes “The Challenge” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” The network has also been criticized for its over-reliance on series like “Ridiculousness,” which often takes up the lion’s share of its programming. (As Variety wrote in 2020, at one point “Ridiculousness” took up 113 of 168 total hours on MTV — 67.3% of its entire schedule.)
And that’s probably why, while inaccurate, this “news” that MTV is shutting down has resonated across social media — especially among Gen Xers and Millennials. They still remember that music on MTV came more than just once a year on the VMAs. And they’ve also seen the recent reports of how cutbacks have eliminated the last vestiges of MTV as we know it: In 2023, the remaining shell of a once-vibrant MTV News division was shut down, and then last year the legacy MTV News website went dark, and its archives were scrubbed from the internet.
Then there was the sense in 2025 that we’ve hit the tipping point when it comes to the decline in basic cable, as companies like NBCU look to shed those once-valuable assets. When Skydance acquired Paramount and started making drastic cuts, its cable networks were hit especially hard: MTV shed most of its remaining comms and talent teams, including top remaining music programming and talent execs. The idea that even a major network like MTV might shut down no longer seems so far-fetched.
According to Variety‘s 2025 tally of the most-watched linear networks in primetime, MTV rated No. 49 — with an average of 189,000 viewers. In adults 18-49, MTV ranked No. 25. Compare that to 10 years ago: In 2015, MTV ranked No. 36 with 606,000 viewers.
So yes, the MTV as we knew it disappeared a long time ago. But MTV as a channel still exists. For now.