MTV moving Australian broadcasting to London

MTV Australia is moving most of its broadcasting operations to London, as the global channel centralises most roles in the UK. These include programming, production, creative, production management, research, operations and acquisitions, according to a statement from the network.

MTV’s parent company, Viacom International Media called this “leveraging its international infrastructure and streamlining certain aspects of its Australian and New Zealand business.”

Fifteen people will lose their jobs, as a result. The company said it would continue to employ sales, marketing and talent/artist management staff in Australia. VIMN emphasised Nickelodeon Australia and New Zealand will not be affected by this move.

The move comes on the eve of VIMN’s plans to re-launch its MTV channels globally with a new on-air identity.

Viacom has been steadily downsizing MTV’s presence in Australia and New Zealand. In 2010, the two operations were merged into one, based in Sydney, and 23 NZ staffers retrenched. That year also MTV’s Australian/NZ operation came under VIMN alongside the UK, Ireland, and Central Eastern Europe. A year later there were more redundancies in Australia, and part of cost-cutting saw the disappearing of the MTV music and video awards.

MTV arrived in Australia in April 1987 on the Nine Network, hosted by Richard Wilkins, and aired on Friday and Saturday nights. It lasted for six years until Nine decided not to renew its deal with Viacom in 1993, citing the high cost of production and licensing.

In June 1996, MTV was launched by the Austereo-owned ARC Music Television as a 24-hour music channel on Optus. It was early days for pay-TV, and ARC was soon relaunched and rebranded as MTV Australia. In December 2002, MTV was added to the Foxtel platform and to Austar two years after that. Relying heavily on imported content, its local programming included MTV Full Tank, The Lair and the Freshwater Blue reality series.