MTV will soon experience its biggest loss since removing music videos: Ridiculousness is reaching the end of its run.
The clip and commentary show has been a part of MTV’s lineup since 2011, but for the past decade, it’s consumed an overwhelming portion of MTV’s schedule. The network has had days when Ridiculousness was the only program being aired, so it seemed the network was deeply invested in the show.
Since I’ve operated this website, many shows have been canceled by MTV, but Ridiculousness feels like an exceptional circumstance. MTV has depleted to a shell of what it used to be, but Ridiculousness served as a cushion for the network to keep running.
Essentially, MTV would run loops of Ridiculousness hoping channel surfers would stop on an episode and play it as background noise. Likely, this is why the network didn’t show reruns of programs like The Challenge or Teen Mom during the day. They require some attention span to understand what’s going on, but Ridiculousness does not.
MTV has aired nearly 2,000 episodes of Rob Dyrdek’s show, reaching the 46 season mark. They also have a stockpile of unaired episodes, so viewers can expect to see new episodes air in 2026.
Allegedly, MTV is going to move in a different, “experimental” direction, but this claim doesn’t build a lot of confidence for the network’s longevity. It also adds more credence to Bananas’ claim that MTV is close to dying.
While we don’t know exactly what MTV plans to do in the future, there are some pretty strong hints in the current lineup and on other ViacomCBS networks. Specifically, this entails reruns of sitcoms (The Big Bang Theory is on the schedule this week) and the network will air movies from the late 90s, 2000s, and early 2010s.
Sound innovative? No. But it is a different approach that could get people to tune into MTV — even if this programming is devoid of anything that used to make up MTV’s DNA.
Things are looking grim on MTV, and on cable in general, but I don’t necessarily think MTV Studios will shed all of its core shows. It seems ViacomCBS is consolidating its programming, and as it offloads unnecessary networks, it has less need for a space-filling show like Ridiculousness.
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