The problem is management consultant types that have no cultural connection to the history of the business walking in and cleaning house.

I guarantee there were huge argument between veteran staff (if they have any) and whatever pen pusher decided the save 0.01% of their overall budget over keeping the data.

All that is solid melts to air.

May I offer you as a consolation prize (potentially) the MuchMusic (Canada) archives
https://www.cbc.ca/music/muchmusic-vide ... -1.6991339

being owned by Bell, I'm not sure how long this will last

I don't think the MTVN archive was destroyed, exactly, it was just taken down from the internet, no?

Akin to: Just because a label allows one of their titles to go out of print doesn't mean that they they've burnt the master tapes.

Of course, there's still a debate to be had about access and permanence and all of that... And it definitely sucks for the people (journalists etc) whose work sort of went "poof" overnight. I wouldn't assume MTVN has been carefully archived for eternity but I don't think it's already been lost forever.

I work for a gigantic corporation and deal directly with a bit of their data backup. Everything is everywhere. We have an onsite data server that has every single piece of video going back to the early 2000's and it is duplicated to another onsite server somewhere a few miles away... I do not know where. Right now we are in the middle of duplicating that server into a robust cloud solution. The fun part is the warehouse of sealed boxes of tape drives that are the physical backup of the server. It's a lot. The thing is it is insured, and to meet the requirements of the insurance it has to exist in at least 3 places. My company makes sports apparel, and they do all this just to protect videos of sales meetings and internal events. Videos of people giving fucking Powerpoint presentations in Zoom calls. MTV is a MEDIA COMPANY. Media literally is their money. There is zero possibility that this doesn't exist in multiple places. Going offline takes it from easy access by the norms, but it is still somewhere. I know it wasn't just propped up by a website. Maybe someone at MTV will be the hero and make sure it isn't permanently lost, get it somewhere it belongs.

WHO CARES???