MTV News Lives On In Internet Archive

Denise Petski
·2-min read

Days after Paramount Global purged online content of MTV News, as well as Comedy Central, TVLand and CMT, MTV News has resurfaced on the Internet Archive. There is now a searchable collection of more than 460,000 web pages previously available on MTVNews.com now accessible on the organization’s Wayback Machine link here.

“As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we have introduced more streamlined versions of our sites. As a result, all MTV News content is being preserved in an archive,” a company spokesperson said. A source close to production tells Deadline no content has been deleted and the company is exploring how to make this important content available in a more efficient way.

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After Paramount Global removed the MTV News content from the site Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine contacted Michael Alex, who founded and led MTV News’ digital group between 1994 and 2007, described the collection as “incomplete” but “very impressive” in a Facebook post when the content was removed, adding, “It’s like a treasure when you find something you’re looking for.”

Of the Paramount Global takedowns, Alex wrote, “It’s a huge loss and a waste of something extremely valuable to anyone who cares about the history of great music.”

The comedycentral.com website hosted clips from all episodes of The Daily Show since 1999, and bits of Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report, among other content.

A notice on Comedy Central’s website states, “While episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website, you can watch Comedy Central through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows.” A similar notice appears on TVLand.com.

The website SavingCountryMusic.com headlined its story on the takedowns: CMT & MTV’s Eradication of Editorial Content is a Catastrophe.

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle, provides free access to collections of digitized materials including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. However, it has faced legal challenges. In 2020, four major book publishers sued the Archive for copyright infringement. A judge ruled against the Internet Archive in 2023. The Archive is currently appealing the ruling and has removed more than 500,000 books from the publishers to comply.\

Variety was first to report the Internet Archive collection.


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