MTV News has taken down its massive digital archive, pulling nearly three decades of content off the web.
The news comes just over a year after MTV News was shuttered following Paramount Global — MTV's parent company — laying off 25 percent of its employees. The archive was pulled with no prior warning, removing interviews, features, news stories and more from 1996 onward. This is bad news for its writers over the years, who now have to hunt for their bylines on archival sites to add to their portfolios.
As of time of publication, Paramount Global has not released a statement explaining why the content was pulled. However, as Consequence's Alex Young notes, licensing rights and E&O (errors and omissions) insurance costs can be immense for a site as large as MTV News.
On top of MTV News being scrubbed, content from CMT has also been removed.