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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Earlier this year, Paramount Global, the conglomerate of Paramount Pictures, CBS, and other networks, announced it would be cutting 25% of its staff, which included shutting down the MTV News unit for good, 36 years after it was launched. People had feelings, including me, because that's where I got my start in journalism.

MTV News first launched out of Kurt Loder's The Weekend Rock Program in 1987. It went on to become a vital source for a new generation of viewers, with fresh reporting on music, culture, and politics coming from a newsroom made by and for them. The network broke stories on major moments in cultural history like the death of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, and the team covered both Woodstocks in the '90s.

More than just music and pop culture, we were also on the campaign trail during political elections. Our choose-or-lose coverage of the 1992 presidential election earned a Peabody, and the slogan stuck for the next two decades of MTV political coverage.

Around the announcement of MTV News, I was joined by John Norris, one of my colleagues back then. Since that time, he's written for GQ, Esquire, Billboard, Under the Radar, and other outlets. The announcement this year comes at a time when layoffs are hitting the media industry hard. To help with that context, we were also joined by Eric Deggans, TV critic and media analyst for NPR.

Listeners, we took calls for this segment, but this is an encore presentation, so we can't actually take your calls live. I started by asking John how he reacted when he first learned about the end of MTV News.

John Norris: Well, full disclosure, I'm a huge soccer fan, and I was sitting in a football soccer bar, watching a Real Madrid game. I got a DM from an editor of The Hollywood Reporter saying, "Hey, did you hear the news about MTV News shutting down?" I was like, "Absolutely not. I did not hear that." He said, "Would you like to comment?" I said, "Maybe at halftime."

[laughter]

Eric Deggans: That's a fan.

[laughter]

John Norris: Thank you. I had to collect my thoughts, and it's a lot. It was so nice to see what you, Alison, and everyone else had to say, in their oral history they ran yesterday. I thought there was a lot of really nice recollections and, man, it's a lot. I don't know whether to talk about what happened and why I think maybe it happened, or just talk about our time there and what it meant to us. I'd be curious what Eric had to say about why it happened because I have my own feelings that it didn't have to necessarily happen in the way that it did, but maybe I'm delusional about that.

Alison Stewart: No, you're a good journalist. You want to know. You just asked my question for me. Eric,-

[laughter]

Eric Deggans: Right.

Alison Stewart: -what was your reaction when you heard? No, you're going to get double-teamed here, Eric?

Eric Deggans: Man, yes. [laughs] No, no, not at all. Well, I wonder if I should be honest about my actual reaction because I don't want to be insulting the people who work there, but part of me was like, I didn't realize it still existed.

I think the cable TV news industry is shrinking rapidly. If you watch MTV, what you see is hours and hours of ridiculousness. I'm talking about the actual TV shows. They keep playing it for hours. The MTV of today is not the MTV of the days when you guys worked for MTV News. It doesn't have a lot of groundbreaking programming anymore. It's reflecting the general state of cable TV news which is having a hard time because young people don't watch linear television anymore.

Even middle-aged people don't watch linear television anymore, but young people especially, so if you're a youth-focused channel like MTV was, and young people are on TikTok and Instagram and Discord and all these other social media platforms, it's hard for MTV to justify its existence, let alone MTV News.

Ultimately, I think that's what happened is the cable business shrunk to the point where it didn't make sense for Viacom, or Paramount Global rather, to keep MTV News going. Something like that.

Also, I think what happened was MTV News, I have this weird relationship to it because I was a fan who watched it, and then I became a pop music critic for the Asbury Park Press, and I covered stories alongside you guys. I was at Woodstock '94. I was at the MTV Video Music Awards when Michael Jackson kissed Lisa Marie. When the Foo Fighters first played their first show in New York, Kurt Loder was standing right next to me.

[laughter]

I went from being a fan to covering stuff right alongside you guys. It was a major platform that recognized that the stuff that music fans cared about and that young people cared about was serious news. That was a big deal at that time, but now it isn't. Everyone does.

NPR, you know Alison, we cover Beyoncé, we cover youth story and movements much more than NPR ever would when MTV News was established. I think part of it was cable TV news collapsed, and part of it is that every other media source began doing what MTV News pioneered.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to someone we know, John. Linda is calling from Woodstock. Hi, Linda.

Linda: Hey, Ali. Hi, John. It's Linda Corradina. How are you guys?

John Norris: How are you?

Linda: It's been crazy, all the people pouring out to say how much MTV News influenced them. It's really an honor to have been there in the beginning and work with you guys.

Alison Stewart: Linda--

Linda: I think I hired you guys.

Alison Stewart: As I said, Linda was the vice president of news of MTV News.

Linda: Yes. I started as a news producer and then became the news director back when John, you were there. I think I was a producer when you were a writer, or maybe I was already the news director.

John Norris: I'd been an intern, and then I got a job as a writer in the news department. Honestly, if it weren't for Linda and Dave Sirulnick, and Judy actually was the one who originally brought me in as an intern, Judy McGrath. So many people I have to thank for having that long, long life there.

Linda: It was such a fun time. I was telling someone the other day, I think I put it on Facebook, just that it was like grad school. We were working with our friends, and if someone had a good idea, we were like, "Let's do it." There was so much freedom.

I want to correct one thing. I think, John, you mentioned it, but The Weekend Rock didn't start after Live Aid. The Week in Rock started as a weekly news segment that we would crash together on a Friday night and get it on right away. We'd edit at unit.

Now I was a producer. We'd take clips from all the shoots we did that week, and we'd boarder for news footage from local affiliates because before I got to MTV, I worked on the desk at ABC News, so I knew who to call, the ABC affiliate in St. Louis, and say, "Hey, there was violence at a Who concert last night or whatever," and then I'd send them four T-shirts in payment, so we get the footage, and we press together a piece because we had no money. People were happy to get their T-shirts.

That's where we started to do more timely stuff. Then after Live Aid is when, and much of the year that we hired Kurt, but we just felt like it was time for MTV News to have its own presence because the news, we were working really hard, and it seemed to get lost at the top of the hour. It wasn't being recognized enough.

Also, by bringing Kurt over from Rolling Stone, we were starting to land the big interviews. We could interview Springsteen, we could interview the Stones. Unfortunately, the VJs were upset about that. I still apologize to Mark Goodman, because he really could do a great interview as the rest of them could, it's just we ended up sucking the big names away from the VJs, unfortunately, but, yes, it was awesome.

Alison Stewart: Linda, thank you. One, thank you for hiring us. That's first of all.

John Norris: Exactly.

Alison Stewart: Eric, I want to bring you into the conversation, something I feel very grateful that Linda and Dave hired me at that time because there weren't news reporters in mainstream news who looked like me at all, who wore their hair in a natural way or who weighed more than a buck 10.

[laughter]

When I think about that I owe a lot of my career to a place that not only accepted who you are, they accepted what you looked like and that was okay. I think when you think about the landscape of who is an acceptable news anchor, I think MTV was really at the forefront on this. I'd love to get your comment on that.

Eric Deggans: Well, so one of the things that struck me, it's going to sound like I'm making up stories, but I'm really not. When I was in college, I was in a band that was signed to Motown, and I was a recording artist, and I was playing a lot of clubs and MTV News and MTV were on video walls in clubs because you guys were talking about the stuff that we cared about at the time.

I remember the Live Aid coverage at clubs actually centered events around it, and they put it up on a big screen, and then we played during the commercial breaks and stuff like that. It was a big deal.

There was always this tension, I think, at MTV between recognizing diversity and the desire for artists of color to be recognized. That was one of the things as somebody who was signed to Motown and was hoping to be a success in the music industry, we were wondering, how is MTV going to treat people who look like us? It was inspirational to see someone like Alison pop up and say, "Oh my God, they are willing to hire a person of color to cover news and to show that they're going to have some diversity," because we were taking our cues from listening to what you were saying about the industry, and what you were saying the trends were, and what you were saying was hot, and what the big artists were telling you about what they were doing.

It was our way of connecting with the industry and figuring out what we were going to do with our careers. That kind of diversity was really important. Frankly, I wish MTV had done more of it at that time, but whatever was done was most appreciated.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the end of MTV News. My guests are journalist John Norris, former correspondent and anchor for MTV News, as well as Eric Deggans, NPR's TV critic and media analyst, and we've just discovered former-- well, you're never a former musician, you are a musician. Let's talk to Matthew from Great Neck. Hey, Matthew.

Matthew: Hi. I was just telling your screener, I'm an older guy. I grew up watching MTV in the '80s. I certainly remember when it started. I think the thing that was so interesting about MTV News was that it really tried to engage young people, probably like no other media at the time. John mentioned the Choose or Lose, and certainly, with the Clinton election and so on. I don't know if it was successful. It seemed like, sadly, that the youth vote never came out. Certainly MTV and MTV News, I thought really tried very hard to engage young people, like I said, like no one else had.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Jenny from Brooklyn. Hey, Jenny, thanks for calling All Of It.

Jenny: Hi. Thanks. First, I wanted to say that it was so important to me to see a young woman of color like you on the news. My only role model was Connie Chung, you probably saw that thing in The New York Times, so that was great. I was a freshman at Berkeley in 1994 when MTV News filmed a Smart Sex. It was actually, I think, filmed in my dorm, and a bunch of my dorm mates were in the show.

It was important because it was the only time or the first time I had seen anything talk about what was actually going on with young people and their sexual lives and talking about it really, honestly. To your point earlier, when it showed up in the local news, it just showed one of my dorm mates waving around a sex toy. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Jenny, thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Cynthia from Manhattan. Hi, Cynthia. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Cynthia: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm a Gen Xer, and the very first stuff that I remember watching with MTV News is the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was 1991, I think. I was a pre-teen, and I remember seeing it in other news channels or in life but MTV News really put it into perspective for me. Then I also really remember the Rocks of Vote campaign. I used to love that.

I graduated high school when I was 17 because I'm one of those cusper birthday people, and I couldn't wait to turn 18 just so I could vote. I registered because there was a law, whatever, where you can register when you're 17, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I was so excited and that was all because of MTV News. Thank you so much for politicizing me, and congratulations on all your accomplishments.

Alison Stewart: Cynthia, thank you so much for calling in. We've got Dave calling in from Toms River, New Jersey. Hi, Dave.

Dave: Thanks for taking my call. One of the callers talked about when MTV first started. I remember my sisters are about 12 years old. We were sitting down in front of the old TV that was the size of a dresser, and I remember when it aired. I think it was one of two videos. I remember the astronauts planting the flag on the moon, and then I remember either it was Fish Heads or was Video Killed the Radio Star but whatever it was, I knew right from then I was hooked at MTV, MTV News, 120 Minutes, Headbangers Ball. It really was formative to my life. I'm a musician. It opened me up to all sorts of different types of music, all different types of cultures.

I think MTV was definitely a formative period. I'm a Gen Xer, too, so I'm really glad that I had that exposure to it. I haven't watched it in years, because I don't even have a TV but it was definitely a huge part of my childhood. I remember just the shared experience with my older sisters Because they were huge music fans, still are. That was just like a shared experience that we had in our childhood. I remember John Norris and self admittedly a huge crush on Kennedy. I know she was one of those, right? Kennedy I was like, oh my gosh.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] I love that Dave. Dave was a heavy user clearly at the time.

[laughter]

John Norris: Fox Business, if you're interested in seeing Ms. Kennedy Montgomery these days.

Alison Stewart: Yes. It's so interesting, John, where people ended up.

John Norris: Exactly. I'm the one who didn't get the memo that when you reach a certain age, Alison, you're supposed to stop writing about music, and young musicians. What's the word for doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

[laughter]

Eric Deggans: Insanity, I believe.

[laughter]

John Norris: I believe that's it. I believe that's it.

Alison Stewart: That was former MTV News anchor and reporter John Norris, and NPR critic and analyst Eric Deggans, reflecting with me about the end of MTV News, an iconic organization for a generation of folks. That's All Of It for today's show, dedicated to Icons. I'm Alison Stewart, and we will catch you back here next time.

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