So you know how people talk about how they remember the days where MTV still played music? Well, it still does… kind of, in different places. Or at least it used to. We all know Paramount- now Skydance Paramount- has been gutting content for years now and it’s getting substantially worse. A large part of MTV is shutting down in the UK and it can’t be a good sign of things to come.
Just like how the United States has MTV, MTV 2, and the lesser known MTV Classic, the UK also has several of them. There’s MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live, along with MTV proper. Now there’s only going to be the latter of those stations as all the sister channels are being shut down effective January 1st, 2026.
It’s interesting in that the stations that are closing up shop were actually music television stations in the sense that they played music. UK’s main MTV station is pretty much all reality programming, including shows like “Geordie Shore,” which is exactly what you think it is in being an English version of “Jersey Shore.” That sounds like a nightmare unto itself, magnified by the fact that it’s going to survive the purge of MTV cuts while music dies.
This brings up the larger topic of, “What next?” Cable channels are failing to the point where parent companies are trying to ditch them. Before the Netflix acquisition bid, Warner Bros. Discovery was doing everything they could to split back up and push all the cable channels (except HBO and Turner Classic Movies) onto the Discovery side of things. Paramount Skydance may be starting to do what they can to cut costs across underperforming stations and what starts in the UK can easily spread.
We doubt this will be the end of programming cuts in 2026 and we’ll continue to inform you about more changes in the land of television. “Video Killed the Radio Star,” but there’s a lot of people holding the knives that are bringing terrestrial television to its inevitable death.
