Posted in: Comedy Central, MTV, Opinion, Paramount+, TV, TV | Tagged: CMT, comedy central, mtv, opinion, paramount

Comedy Central, MTV, CMT: Is Paramount Purging Our Pop Culture Past?

Comedy Central, MTV (including MTV News) & CMT's online archives were taken down, as Paramount appears to be purging our pop culture history.

Published Wed, 26 Jun 2024 17:37:09 -0500

by Ray Flook

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UPDATE: Prior to this report going live, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Paramount Network and TV Land have also seen their websites strip-mined of past content.

At this point, many thought Paramount Global's CEO trio of George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins would be running on borrowed time in those roles as they helped new controlling owner Skydance Media finalize the deal many expected would go down. But Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone changed the game dramatically last week, calling off the deal and leaving Cheeks, McCarthy, and Robbins to move forward with the Herculean effort of looking to bring down the company's approximately $14B debt load while stabilizing Paramount's financials. The trio would report a number of initiatives that would be put into play – including $500 million in cost reductions that were noted – with all aspects of the company expected to take a hit. We're offering some backstory because Paramount appears to be "scorched earth" when it comes to the pop culture archives that used to be housed on the Comedy Central, MTV, and CMT websites.

Latenighter.com first reported – and TVLine confirmed earlier today – that Comedy Central had removed its archives of past programming – including past episodes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, @midnight, The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, and more. The news comes shortly after news hit that the same had been done with MTV – including decades' worth of MTV News programming and coverage. In addition, the long-running country music-themed network CMT also saw its archives removed. In the image above, we've included screencaps of the pop-up message you receive when you visit each respective site (with much of the content that's gone MIA not available on Paramount+).

It's bad enough that we've watched films and series being removed and written off as tax relief because way too many companies thought they could be Netflix but couldn't – and now, the creators of the films and show and the viewers are the ones left paying the price. But what makes this worse is that Paramount is actually purging pop culture history. Take a second and think back to all of the important social and political issues that MTV News addressed over its run. The same can easily be said about Comedy Central's The Daily Show. And yet, these reminders of who we've been as a society over the decades – the good, the bad, and all of the weird, wicked & wonderful stuff in between – are being removed without a sense of understanding of the negative impact it has on us as a whole. Paramount needs to do better – because right now, it's failing us in some truly horrible ways.

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