On This Day in 2002, ‘The Osbournes’ Debuted on MTV, Changing Reality TV and Heavy Metal Forever
· Vice
It’s been 24 years since The Osbournes debuted on MTV on March 5, 2002, marking a moment that would change reality TV and heavy metal forever.
A one-of-a-kind series at the time, The Osbournes followed the daily lives of Ozzy Osbourne and his family: wife and manager Sharon, son Jack, and daughter Kelly. The series was a standout for its consistently high ratings, and it also won the 2002 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program.
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While the show was a massive success, Ozzy actually wasn’t happy about it. He actually kind of hated it. Back in 2020, the heavy metal godfather spoke to NME about the series and confessed that he was miserable filming it. “The level of success that TV show got us was too much,” he said. “I had to bow out. I said to Sharon: ‘I don’t like the way it makes me feel, and I can’t stand f***ing cameramen in my house.'”
“I’m not upset that I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again,” Ozzy went on to say. “People were going: ‘Aren’t you worried about losing your fans?’ I said: ‘I’m not worried about losing my fans – I’m worried about losing my f***ing mind.'”
So what was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back? Well, Ozzy had a story about that. “God’s honest truth: one day I’m lying on the couch and about six or seven Japanese people come in,” he recalled. “I thought they were friends of Kelly’s. I said: ‘Upstairs, second door on the right.’ I didn’t even want to f***ing get off the couch.”
“Turned out they’d just walked in. Got off a tour bus and walked in the f***ing house,” Ozzy said. “It was nuts!”
Ozzy Osbourne passed away on Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Sadly, Ozzy passed away last year. He was 76. Just weeks prior, he’d held his final concert, Back to the Beginning, taking the stage for the last time. For years, the Prince of Darkness had been living with Parkinson’s, as well as other health issues.
Officials determined that his cause of death was an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease with autonomic dysfunction were listed as associated factors.
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