What goes up, must come down. MTV announced on Thursday that it’s most popular show, Jersey Shore, has reached its imminent end. The show that saved MTV from closing will begin it’s sixth and final season on October 4th of this year.  ”Thursday’s announcement marks the end of an era.”,  MTV said, modestly.

After becoming wrapped up in their own show spinoffs and projects, many of the headlining stars of Jersey Shore have little time left for the show that got them started. As a tough business decision, MTV decided to finally pull the plug on the failing series before ratings got any lower and production costs got any higher – a trend beginning to form for the show. For the final season, the show’s main stars will be pulling in around 2 Million dollars each, salaries simply too high to justify low audience approval.

The show, however, wasn’t always on a path for failure. The end of the third season – with high anticipation of the fourth – proved to be the sweet-spot for the show’s existence. In an attempt to boost ratings even higher, MTV relocated the cast to terrorize Florence, Italy for a season. Starting out at a record high 8.8 million viewers, everything seemed to be going perfectly. However, it  didn’t take long to realize that the cast did not feel comfortable causing chaos overseas and the locals were also unimpressed. Viewers began drifting away from the show at that point and ratings began to fall. 

After returning to Jersey for season 5, it seemed as though the high ratings could not be revived; viewers still continued to drop. At one point, ratings were down to first-season levels. Despite the large fallout, the show remains cable’s number one hit among 12-34 year olds, though that key range has also seen better days.

It seems as though the cast has been forced to face the real world and grow up. Two members in particular – Snooki and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. Mike is now living with a ‘sober coach’ in an attempt to regain control of his drinking problems and addiction to prescription drugs. Snooki is not long away from being a new mom and will, too, need to face the real world and leave behind her party-animal lifestyle to raise her child. From a production standpoint, where is the entertainment in that?

As expected, we will see a mess of Jersey Shore programming up through the launch of the final season. On September 6th, the network will be airing Jersey Shore exclusively until it breaks for the broadcast of the 2012 Music Awards. We will probably also see an emotional farewell finale and likely a reunion in the future.

The show will be gone after season 6, and from many parents we hear a sigh of relief. But the characters will still live on in shows like “Snooki & Jwoww” and “The Pauly D Project”. Lest we forget all of the binge drinking, hooking up, and senseless fighting entertainment that this show has delivered.