MTV News
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | News media, Entertainment |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Founder | Kurt Loder |
| Defunct | May 2023 (ceased operations), June 24, 2024 (website closed) |
| Fate | Shut down due to budget cuts and restructuring |
| Headquarters | United States |
Area served | United States, international MTV networks |
Key people | Kurt Loder, Dan Fierman, Michael Alex |
| Products | News content on music, pop culture, social justice, electoral politics; digital segments including MTV News: You Need to Know |
| Parent | MTV (Paramount) |
MTV News functioned as the news division of MTV, operating primarily in the United States with localized editions across MTV's international network and an online editorial team. In 2016, the brand underwent a revamp aimed at competing with digital outlets such as BuzzFeed and Vice, but by mid-2017, it experienced major reductions due to budget cuts.
Content produced by MTV News was disseminated through MTV’s websites, mobile applications, YouTube, and broadcast channels.
In November 2018, MTV News introduced daily briefings on Twitter under the title MTV News: You Need to Know, which was later shortened to MTV News Need to Know. This digital segment addressed current trends spanning pop culture, social justice, and electoral politics.
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History
The inception of MTV News dates back to 1987 with the launch of The Week in Rock, hosted by veteran music journalist and critic Kurt Loder, formerly associated with Rolling Stone. Starting in 1990, the program adopted the opening riff from Megadeth's "Peace Sells" as its signature theme.
MTV News broadened its scope into political reporting during the 1992 U.S. presidential election through its "Choose or Lose" initiative, which continued to be a feature in subsequent presidential campaigns. Notably, during the 2008 election cycle, candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared together on an MTV special addressing the Iraq war.
Throughout the 2000s, MTV News expanded its digital footprint by leveraging its website alongside social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, primarily focusing on music and pop culture news aggregation. In November 2015, Dan Fierman, formerly editorial director at Grantland, was brought on board to enhance long-form journalism and diversify editorial talent. Despite these efforts, by June 2017, MTV shifted its news division’s focus towards video content production, prompting substantial editorial staff reductions. This pivot resulted in a notable decrease in content volume across its distribution channels.
The division endured continuous downsizing throughout the late 2000s and 2010s before ultimately closing in May 2023. By June 2024, Variety reported that more than twenty years of content from MTVNews.com had been removed following the complete shutdown of the site. Michael Alex, who served as founding editor of MTV News’ digital operations from 1994 to 2007, condemned the loss of these archives as a profound cultural and historical detriment, highlighting their importance as documentation of entertainment history.
A representative from Paramount confirmed that all MTV News materials are retained within an internal archive but are not accessible to the public. According to Deadline Hollywood, no content has been deleted, and initiatives are underway to improve accessibility. In July 2024, the Internet Archive released an independent searchable index encompassing 460,575 web pages from mtv.com/news dating back to 1997 via the Wayback Machine; however, this archive remains incomplete due to missing articles and images.
MTV News International
During MTV's expansion into the European market, the network initially incorporated US-produced MTV News segments supplemented with region-specific content. Following the regional segmentation of MTV channels in 1997, the network localized both its presenters and news coverage according to each area. Key European shows included the daily MTV News Update and the weekly MTV News Weekend Edition, both of which were discontinued in the early 2000s. As MTV’s programming emphasis shifted toward reality television, news bulletins were reduced to brief hourly updates broadcast between 16:00 and 22:00 on weekdays on select channels.
In July 2013, Viacom International Media Networks introduced a new international news bulletin derived from MTV News UK broadcasts. These English-language segments were aired across most MTV channels globally—except in the United States, Canada, Italy, Brazil, Japan, China, and Latin America—and were either dubbed or subtitled for local audiences. Viewers were encouraged to visit mtvnews.co.uk for more comprehensive news coverage, with presentations hosted by MTV personalities based in the UK.
MTV Networks revealed a rebranding initiative in mid-2016; however, the extent to which this affected international news programming has not been publicly clarified. By that time, MTV News International had been considerably downsized, concentrating primarily on social media platforms and localized websites serving markets such as the UK, Benelux, Australia, and New Zealand.