VH-1



Video Hits One. The sister channel to MTV, also owned by Viacom.

Whereas MTV was focusing on the teenagers and young adults, VH-1 was initially its older-skewing counterpart, which came into being primarily to compete with Turner Broadcasting's Cable Music Channel (which shut down before VH-1 signed on, and wound up being replaced with it). Thus, VH-1, the home of Kenny G, Mariah Carey, Anita Baker, etc. videos on infinite loop which had all of the appeal of your average Lite FM station.

In The Nineties, like MTV, it started moving away from music videos, but still played them. Moreover, it started skewing a bit younger, courting recently lapsed MTV viewers among its new audience. Notable series during this period were Pop Up Video, which put visual commentary on a music video, explaining various lyrics and other things, and Behind The Music, which gave fans a look into the personal lives of many popular and long-standing musicians. There was also a Behind the Music spinoff called Behind The Music 2, which focused on groups that hadn't been around long enough to warrant an hour-long episode.

At the Turn of the Millennium the channel's focus turned to general pop culture, In particular, the I Love the... series has proven extremely popular, covering the 1980s thrice, the 1970s thrice, the 1990s twice, and even the Turn of the Millennium itself in 2008. From this success, the channel started to focus on pop culture-related reality shows. Unlike MTV's focus on teenage girls who feel the need to whine despite being richer than most countries, VH-1 focuses on washed-up celebrities, giving such former celebs as Hulk Hogan, Danny Bonaduce, Flavor Flav, and Christopher Knight a second swing at stardom (and it works...the season finale of Flavor of Love, Flavor Flav's show, attracted 6 million viewers).

Like MTV, it's not what it once was, but it's still popular. But unlike MTV, it still plays music videos in the daytime...for now.

VH-1 also launched three spinoff channels.
 * VH-1 Country is now known as CMT Pure Country. Unlike most music channels, CMT Pure Country primarily focuses on videos, as does...
 * VH-1 Soul, which specializes in soul and R&B videos.
 * VH-1 Classic's format is similar to its parent channel's lineup in the second half of The Nineties -- daytime music video blocks featuring videos from The Seventies through The Nineties, reruns of their various documentary shows (Behind the Music even gets some of its episodes updated as Behind the Music Remastered), and vintage concerts and music-themed movies. It also has a growing lineup of original shows and specials, primarily focused on the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal genres. (Tellingly, they were the one channel in the MTV family to acknowledge the parent channel's 30th anniversary in 2011 by programming a whole weekend of classic segments and promos.)