Research - MUSIC TELEVISION CHANNELS

In 1985, Viacom bought Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, which owned MTV and Nickelodeon, renaming the company MTV Networks and beginning this expansion. Before 1987, MTV featured almost exclusively music videos, but as time passed, they introduced a variety of other shows, including some that were originally intended for other channels.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, MTV placed a stronger focus on reality shows and related series, building on the success of The Real World and Road Rules. The first round of these shows came in the mid-1990s, with game shows such as Singled Out, reality-based comedy shows such as Buzzkill, and late-night talk shows such as The Jon Stewart Show and Loveline.

With backlash towards what some consider too much superficial content on the network, a recent New York Times article also stated the intention of MTV to shift its focus towards more socially conscious media, which the article labels "MTV for theObama era."^[87] Shows in that vein included T.I.'s Road to Redemption and Fonzworth Bentley's finishing school show From G's to Gents.

The original incarnation of Kiss TV was created by Guy Wingate, who, as an original co-creator of London's Kiss 100 (in its pirate days) was brought back in to head up EMAP's fledgling TV division by the more-widely known Kiss chief, Gordon McNamee (Mac). The channel ran for one hour a night on the Mirror Group's L!VE TV cable circuit and after a year moved up to the Granada satellite and cable platform, taking a similar slot in the evening.

Although the original idea for the channel was proposed in 1993 (three years after Kiss FM launched as a legal station), it took many months for Wingate to convince UK television regulators to permit the extension of a brand name over to television. When permission was finally granted, Kiss had once again innovated by becoming the first "Masthead" TV project in the UK.

Within one year, the station was beating MTV in its time slots, and quickly gained a cult status for its low-budget edgy coverage of the UK dance music scene. The channel's presenters included legendary DJs such as BBC Radio 1's Judge Jules. By the time the channel was one year old, it had attracted major sponsorship from blue-chip brands such as Levi's, Sony consumer products and The Guardian newspaper.