Michael Jackson Archives

MTV shut down five of its music channels in the United Kingdom.

The television channel officially stopped broadcasting on its MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live channels in the country on Wednesday, Dec. 31, according to multiple reports, after reports of the move first surfaced in October. 24-hour music channels in other countries are also said to be off-air.

BBC journalist Jono Read captured MTV Music’s final moments in an X post on Wednesday. The station ended its run with The Buggles’ 1979 single “Video Killed the Radio Star” – the first video ever to air on MTV – followed by a sign-off animation. At the bottom, a news ticker read: “MTV Music is now closed. Continue watching over at MTV.”

USA TODAY has reached out to MTV for comment.

The flagship U.K. station MTV HD remains on air, and its American MTV channels – including MTV, MTV2, MTV Live, MTV Classic and MTV Tres – are unaffected.

Four decades after the revolutionary station aired music videos 24/7, MTV’s decision is a further sign of the times. MTV’s flagship channel began increasingly circulating reality-show-heavy programming in the 2000s with series like “The Real World,” “Teen Mom” and “Jersey Shore.” The network’s sister channels feature more music-centered content, though with significantly less reach, distribution and revenue.

In 2023, MTV shuttered its music news division and website, MTV News. Its campus-centered offshoot, MTVU, ceased airing at universities in 2018, and currently airs only as a digital cable channel.

MTV changed the television landscape with its launch in 1981, playing music around the clock and related programming guided by video jockeys, or VJs, and was influential in the growth of the music video as an artistic medium. The channel also evolved in the genres of music videos it promoted. MTV moved from rock to pop and R&B – and later, hip-hop – after it broke its own color barrier in the 1980s with the promotion of Michael Jackson’s music videos for “Billie Jean” and “Thriller.” (USAToday)

Lionel Richie has revealed details about the late Michael Jackson’s hygiene habits, which he said led to the singer earning the unsavory nickname “Smelly.”

The 76-year-old “All Night Long” singer made the revelation in his debut memoir, Truly, published Tuesday.

In the book, Richie wrote about how Jackson was “very close with his siblings and his mom,” but once he went solo, “making these monster albums, movies and videos, he was in charge of his own ship.”

“His day-to-day life was what you could call eccentric,” he said of his friend. “Like an absent-minded professor but still a kid.”

Richie noted that fellow music icon Quincy Jones would often tease Jackson by calling him “Smelly.”

“Michael would laugh too, realizing that he was oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t changed or washed his clothes for a couple of days or so,” the Grammy winner added. “We all have our quirks.”

Richie suggested that Jackson’s poor hygiene was a byproduct of his significant level of fame, as the King of Pop was constantly touring and had little time to run errands like visiting a department store.

“He was on tour performing in the elaborate costumes made for him by his stylists, or he was in his pajama bottoms and slippers in the studio or he was in his going-out attire,” he penned. “Or he was at home in something loose and comfortable so he could practice his dance moves and play with his menagerie of pets.”

Whenever Jackson “came to visit me, he was wearing whatever — jeans and a t-shirt,” Richie recalled. “And the jeans were either falling off him or too short to even be jeans and, well, smelly.”

Richie once asked the superstar about his pants, only to have him respond: “Lionel, I walked by a store in the Valley. The owner came out and gave me a free pair.”

The “Endless Love” singer further explained that Jackson couldn’t simply send his clothes to get drycleaned, because more often than not, his items wouldn’t be returned.

“Everybody kept something for a souvenir,” Richie said. “He just got into the habit of wearing the same pants until they were unwearable.”

Jackson has previously been described as “the dirtiest, most unsanitary person in Hollywood” by five of his former housekeepers.

In a 2014 interview with the New York Post, they claimed the singer “lived in a house of filth and urinated on the floor.”

“Michael sometimes ran around where the animals were, and he’d track… Poop throughout the house and think nothing of it,” Anonymous Maid 1 alleged. “Then, if you said something, he’d threaten to make doo-doo snowballs and throw it at you.” (Independent)

Tag: Michael Jackson

MTV Channels come full circle with final clip: “Video Killed The Radio Star”

Lionel Richie reveals nickname for Michael Jackson due to poor hygiene