If you thought Catfish had long gone away, well, consider yourself catfished, to use the term liberally. Either way, it’s dead now.
Paramount has notified Catfish producers that MTV — also still a thing — is going to pass on future seasons of the show, a source with knowledge of the situation told The Hollywood Reporter. MTV has granted producers permission to shop the series elsewhere.
MTV will continue to air the series library.
Catfish actually hasn’t been away for all that long: season nine premiered on MTV on April 30, 2024. It just feels like much longer in the same way it feels like MTV has not aired a piece of original programming since COVID. (And how it feels like MTV has not aired a music video since TRL…)
Catfish: The TV Show premiered on MTV in 2012. It was based on the 2010 movie Catfish, which was distributed by Universal Pictures — a studio that has nothing to do with MTV. The film followed Nev Schulman, who would go on to host the TV series, as he finds out the attractive woman he believed to have entered an online relationship with was actually someone posing as the person by using photos and the identity of a family friend. The term “catfished” was born, and the show took over from there.
Schulman’s own story was filmed by his brother Ariel Schulman and friend Henry Joost. Max Joseph joined for the TV show serving as a producer, a (very-)handheld camera operator and sort of an on-screen co-host.
MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show was a viral hit. It debuted just after Ridiculousness, right as the original Jersey Shore came to an end and Teen Mom took off. But since then, a lot changed for MTV. In 2019, MTV parent Viacom was re-merged with CBS, ultimately forming Paramount Global. In the streaming age, cable has experienced a swift and steady decline, and by the time Skydance merged with Paramount this summer, original programming on basic cable (especially Viacom’s basic-cable channels) was very limited — the running joke around MTV is that it has long been just reruns of Ridiculousness. Well, now it will also be repeats of Catfish, but no new episodes.
#Catfish #Canceled #MTV
