I think that it was the streaming bubble that ultimately did them in. By the early 2010s, MTV's brand identity had shifted from music videos to low budget entertainment like reality shows. Unlimited investor money pouring into streaming services meant that pay TV didn't have to worry much about budgets for a while. At the same time, actual reality shows increasingly competed for reruns on OTA digital subchannels, and broadcast content standards were an awkward fit for the semi-edgy brand that MTV had built for itself.

And then when the streaming bubble popped, bandwidth was so cheap that the low budget semi-edgy TV show niche was quickly captured by free-with-ads services like Tubi. Which left MTV as a Paramount Plus brand with...the VMAs, and their old shows, and spinoffs of their old shows, and the occasional music documentary, and that's about it.