After more than four decades of shaping music culture and youth identity, MTV is preparing to turn off five of its most beloved music channels. On 12 October 2025, parent company Paramount Global announced that MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live will cease broadcasting on 31 December 2025.
Only the main MTV channel — which now primarily airs reality and unscripted content — will remain.
This decision marks a deep shift in how music is consumed and signals the end of a chapter in linear music television.
In contrast, MTV HD (the main MTV channel in many markets) will survive — but with a dramatically shifted programming focus toward reality shows, entertainment content, and unscripted formats.
The shutdown will begin in the UK and Ireland, followed by rollouts across Europe and various international markets. Some local broadcasting contracts or regulatory considerations may delay or modify exact timelines in certain countries.
The core purpose of MTV — to deliver a steady stream of curated music videos — no longer aligns with how audiences want to consume music. Fans now access music videos instantly via YouTube, TikTok, Vevo, Spotify’s video content, and other streaming platforms. The era of turning on a music-video channel and letting videos play in a sequence has largely passed.
Because music discovery and viewing are now interactive and on-demand, linear music video networks struggle to compete in relevance and flexibility.
With declining audience numbers for music video blocks on TV, the economic logic of running multiple niche music channels weakens. Advertising rates, subscription carriage fees, and viewership metrics are less favorable for networks that mostly show music videos than for those with broader, high-engagement content.
Many of these channels now attract only a fraction of their peak audiences, which makes sustaining them increasingly costly and unprofitable.
As part of these changes, the company has already shut down or consolidated other divisions, reduced staffing, and pulled back on underperforming linear assets.
MTV’s brand still has value. But going forward, Paramount appears to be repositioning MTV not as a cluster of music video channels but as a broader entertainment brand — one that can be expressed through streaming, licensing, live events, social media, and digital content.
In the coming months, how MTV and its stakeholders navigate the shutdown, migrate content, preserve legacy, and reinvent the brand will be instructive — not just for music television, but for any legacy media brand facing the pressure of the digital era.