I wouldn’t go that far. I think the spread of false stories about the so-called “death” of MTV largely stems from the fact that it’s been largely out of sight and out of mind for years. Fewer people have cable now, and those who do rarely venture over to MTV’s spot in the channel lineup to see what’s on. And when those few viewers do check out MTV’s daily schedule, they usually find nothing but endless reruns of “Ridiculousness” or the same sitcoms they can find on over a dozen other cable channels. The only time people ever paid attention to MTV was when it aired the MTV Video Music Awards, and since that show is now broadcast on CBS, there’s almost no reason for MTV to exist. Thus, it was extremely easy for people to believe false stories about MTV going off the air, since the network has all the hallmarks of a “zombie” channel that just takes up space among the hundreds of channels on the cable TV schedule. I don’t want to victim-blame anybody, but Paramount Skydance should’ve done a better job when it scaled down MTV’s operations by immediately squelching the inevitable rumors that would spread about the network completely shutting down.
BTW, when I did check about how they dropped the ball, about counteracting the wrong news, some sources that I read made the point that this had the look of a terrible trial balloon, that is that Paramount Global is considering doing just that, to eventually shut all video only channels and more. I do think their overall silence on this points to that end.