As of 24 June this year, MTV News Website is shut down along with their archives deleted. Over twenty years worth of their content is no longer available after the entire internet has been scrubbed of the website and everything that was once available on their website. This concerning move comes a year after Paramount shut down MTV news and fired all of its staff claiming it was part of a ‘strategic realignment’. With this massive undertaking, this strikes a major blow to music history and the music industry as a whole.
The company issued no warning before this sudden move against American music culture was made. With the deletion of MTV News archives, they have erased decades of iconic moments, journalism stories, breaking news and pivotal music culture references. Journalists who spent years of their lives on some of these moments are outraged with the sudden disappearance of their work.
“So, mtvnews.com no longer exists. Eight years of my life are gone without a trace. All because it didn’t fit some executives’ bottom lines. Infuriating is too small a word.” – Patrick Hosken, a former editor at MTV News, stated on X (formerly Twitter)
MTV News originated in the late 1980s with a show titled ‘The Week in Rock’ hosted by Kurt Loder. He went on to become the first MTV News Anchor. MTV News website launched in 1996 and has held records of everything related to the music industry since their take off. Former employees of the news website discovered their work and dedication was no longer accessible. Apparently, MTV News is not the only website to suffer this loss. Paramount deleted the archives of CMT.com almost a week before disregarding MTV News. Decades worth of information focused primarily on country music and pop music have simply vanished…
Users are now being redirected to the main MTV website with seemingly no hope of the past news and journalism articles being found again. Thousands of articles documenting the American music industry, interviews with major artists are now lost to time. Former readers of the MTV News website consider the major loss to be the ‘Mixtape Monday’ column, which ran for almost a decade on the former website. In this column readers could find interviews with up and coming artists, producers, reviews of shows, and of course the latest hits influencing further radio fame.
“This is disgraceful. They’ve completely wiped the MTV News archive. Decades of pop culture history research material gone, and why?” – Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt said in response to discovering the lack of archives.
So far, representatives for Paramount and MTV have not commented as to why they have shown such lacklustre of respect for the former website. Several major news outlets and magazines are all left asking the same questions. Why did Paramount executives pull the plug on two of the biggest music journalist archival systems on the internet? Where has all this music history gone? What is the next one to go?
Photo source: Istock Photo
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This post was last modified on June 30, 2024 7:41 pm