The popular music brand VH1 Classic started out mainly consisting of niche genres which didn't appease the masses at the time which led to its downfall on DStv and the switch to VH1 Classic.
At the time this channel was still around, they were plenty of channels offering international hits mainly modern day music before localising their offering which welcomed a new rail of viewers while others resorted to other means like streaming to cater for their tastes.
In all those eras, VH1 Classic stood out from the rest with their selection of international classic hits while Mzansi Music dealt with the local spectrum.
It wasn't until 2019 that ViacomCBS announced the discontinuation of VH1 Classic and the launch of the European MTV Music24 which therefore killed all their classical tunes for more modernizing.
It wasn't until that period that most channels which had a stack of international hits reduced the lineup for more localised tunes therefore boosting the value of MTV Music24 which doesn't cater for that region as it adapting to a European feed.
MTV Music24 wasn't all rainbows and sunshine aside from not carrying any fragment of VH1 Classic. The offering was very repetitive and they'd repeat the same music in the same order it was arranged and this continued on until last year where it was replaced with the pop based brand MTV Hits.
When VH1 Classic was terminated people pointed the finger toward DStv and when MTV Hits dethroned MTV Music24 there was a lot of silence in the switch as well as the reception. What some don't realise was that there was more to the story.
Tracing back to VH1 Classic, the channel was handled by Europe which used it as an entertainment channel to repeat programs from MTV. Africa got a different feed for some apparent reason.
In 2016, the owners of VH1 being announced that VH1 Classic would rebrand to MTV Classic as it was suspected that VH1 was being terminated internationally seeing that it was a property of MTV. Of course, this switch wasn't applicable to viewers in South Africa.
VH1 Classic was initially discontinued in 2016 so the feed in South Africa was just on autopilot for the past 3 years as they tried sourcing out the major reject MTV Music24.
MTV Music24 vanished two years later and if you google the channel. It appears that the brand was phased out likely as part of the initiative for MTV Global formerly MTV Europe which is limiting the localised feeds probably due to the launch of Paramount+.
Disney plans to close 100 international channels in the near future following the successful launch of their streaming service Disney+. It had been speculated that other companies will likely follow at a given time.
About VH1 Classic, the channel is currently known as MTV Classic I presume the reason it wasn't picked up in Africa was that ViacomCBS was looking for something that appease the current masses and anything like MTV Classic didn't fit that description.
MTV Classic has become a dumpster fire with its stack of repeats pulling 16000 viewers a month in a market with a large amount of pay-tv households. ViacomCBS no longer shares details about the viewership and I wouldn't be shocked if the channel was discontinued with nothing left in place.
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