Original series like Faking It, Eye Candy, Happyland, and Finding Carter have all been canceled since 2014. MTV recently canceled three of its scripted shows after only one season each. Now, it looks like they’re just trying to catch up. MTV used to be closely in tune with what youth culture wanted, and they were adept at leading the conversation around it. They’re not necessarily competing with other networks for the attention of the elusive 16-to-24 market they’re competing with the internet, and content on the internet is mostly free, on-demand, and increasingly created by the very young people the network is trying to court. The challenge facing MTV now is different than the ones the network has dealt with in eras past. None of its shows are the cultural touchpoints they were a decade ago, or 20 years ago, or even 30 years ago. MTV hasn’t had a big, topic-of-conversation hit in years - not on TV, not in terms of artist access, and certainly not online. But even if rumors of the network’s demise are exaggerated, the company might just be in the midst of an identity crisis. So judging by some of the network’s ratings and certainly by its streaming numbers, MTV is not yet dying. Viewership for the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards dropped 34% from the year before, although that was counterbalanced by a 70% increase in online streams, and the network is still finding ratings success among teenagers with shows like Fear Factor (MTV’s highest-rated premiere in two years) and Promposal. They’re also paring back their scripted programs, canceling acclaimed shows like Sweet/Vicious and possibly sending the half-hour comedy Loosely Exactly Nicole to Facebook for its second season. Last October, Chris McCarthy took over as president of MTV (in addition to Logo TV and VH1), saying “the youth culture brand, and the opportunity to reinvent is like no other.”īut on the programming side, MTV executives seem more motivated by nostalgia than leading the network into the future, reviving old unscripted standbys like My Super Sweet 16 and Cribs (on Snapchat). Last summer, Lauren Dolgen, MTV’s former head of reality TV who created international hits like Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant, left the company after 19 years. The layoffs and push to short videos come after months of changes for the company. The cultural criticism and reporting that MTV News produced was well-regarded, at least by other writers, but MTV management decided to change direction, telling Billboard, “We’re doubling down on where we’ve seen our biggest successes in youth culture, music and entertainment.” With the end of this iteration of MTV News came MTV’s new slant: shortform video content for younger viewers. In late June, less than two years after hiring a high-profile team of editors and writers to venture into longform journalism, MTV laid off those hires and is restructuring its online news division once again. “Or at the very least, this is the longest stretch of time anyone has had cause to say MTV is dead.” “I’d say that the difference between then and now is MTV might be really dead,” Rob Tannenbaum, co-author of I Want My MTV, the story of the network’s golden age in the 1980s and ’90s, tells BuzzFeed News. After each wave of success for MTV comes an inevitable lull, and nearly each time, audience and critics alike wonder if the network can do it again. “MTV is at death’s door,” wrote the New York Post. After Jersey Shore went off the air and the network’s ratings dipped in 2015, Billboard wrote about how “the channel lacks a breakout hit that defines its sensibility” and the New York Times called Viacom, MTV’s parent company, the “vanguard of yesteryear.” Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger suggested that Viacom was the next Kodak, sure to fold because its young audience isn’t interested in linear TV. Every few years, like clockwork, there’s big talk about whether MTV is dead, too far gone from relevancy to return.
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