RIP MTV News: Unforgettable Black Pop Culture Moments

As MTV News shuts down after 36 years, we remember 10 defining moments where it helped to progress Black pop culture.

Source: Rebecca Sapp / Getty

Since launching back in August 1981, MTV Networks has been a hub for all things music and the culture of fans that listen to it on a daily. The company has shifted gears many times throughout its four decades on air so far, but throughout it all one thing has remained a near constant: the broadcasting of MTV News.

Well, that is until now.

MTV News is shutting down after 36 years. pic.twitter.com/3pEx1x9Hhc

— Pop Base (@PopBase) May 9, 2023

If you lived in the era of Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren @ MTV News, you have lived. So many huge moments in pop culture: Kurt Cobain, Biggie, and 2Pac passings, Courtney Love crashing Madonna’s interview, etc. https://t.co/viCyU6lSIg pic.twitter.com/rmdnRDYVfK

— Carlos (@carlosjharris) May 9, 2023

While the network itself will remain intact, albeit with less music and more (read: too much!) reruns of Ridiculousness, parent company Paramount Global has decided to include MTV News in its cut-back plan that led to major layoffs recently. Although a sad day in the world of music and journalism, the move may have been one that’s been a long time coming.

Take a look below at how The Hollywood Reporter describes the decline of MTV News:

“MTV News was already significantly reduced in size back in 2017, when it largely abandoned a strategy to take on outlets like BuzzFeed and Vice with a team of digital journalists led by Grantland alum Dan Fierman. The company said at the time it would refocus on shortform content and video in a return to its roots (MTV News used to have interstitials at the top of the hour on the cable channel with news updates). The most recent iteration focused on entertainment and pop culture news and criticism.

Now, however, amid a larger upheaval in the entertainment business, and with Paramount looking to cut costs, MTV News is one of the pieces that just didn’t fit in the larger strategy at play. According to Comscore, MTV drew 6 million monthly visitors to its flagship website in March, up slightly from 5.6 million in the same month a year earlier.

It was a real digital presence, but small potatoes compared to competitors like BuzzFeed and Vice, which have also shuttered or downsized their news divisions in recent months.”

One thing that we’ll always give credit to MTV News for is being one of the key outlets on the scene during important moments throughout Black pop culture. From profiling the rising stars that we now call icons to featuring impactful news stories relevant to our people, we send our farewell salute to the network in our own nostalgic way.

Take a look below at 10 unforgettable moments during the run of MTV News that helped profile and push Black pop culture forward.