Early years (1983–1997) CMTV, an initialism for Country Music Television, was founded by Glenn D. Daniels, the owner of Video World Productions in
Hendersonville, Tennessee. Daniels put together the ownership group of Telestar Corporation and the Blinder Robinson & Company investment bank in a three-way split. Daniels also served as the program director and the first president of the network. The network launched on March 5, 1983, at 6:19 p.m. CT, beating its chief competitor,
The Nashville Network, to air by two days. The first video clip to air on CMT was
Faron Young's 1971 hit "
It's Four in the Morning". The following summer,
MTV (which would be acquired by
Viacom 16 years later) filed a trademark infringement lawsuit over the initials CMTV, and the network changed its name to simply
CMT. In 1991,
Opryland USA and its owner
Gaylord Entertainment Company acquired CMT in a $34 million deal. The network was sold by a group led by radio station owner Robert Sillerman, record producer James Guercio and Nyhl L Henson. By 1998, Gaylord reported $10 million in losses from CMT Europe and decided to cease broadcasting the network on March 31, 1998. Gaylord had planned to emulate the successful model created by
E!, by selling large programming blocks to other European channels, but these plans never occurred. In 1995, CMT dropped all videos by Canadian artists without U.S. record contracts in response to the network being replaced in Canada by
Calgary, Alberta-based
New Country Network. By March 1996, CMT had eventually returned the dropped videos to its playlist after reaching an agreement to acquire a 20% ownership of New Country Network, relaunching it as a domestic version of CMT.
Under CBS/Viacom (1997–2017) offices for music-based operations. In 1997, both CMT and TNN were sold to
Westinghouse, then-owner of
CBS, for a reported $1.5 billion. CBS would in-turn be acquired by
Viacom in 2000, assuming ownership of CMT and TNN and folding them into the
MTV Networks. TNN would phase out country programming to avoid overlap with CMT, changing its full name to "The National Network". In-spite of the decrease in music programming, in part due to the rise of
internet-based platforms in the 2000s, CMT would experience significant ratings gains in the years' since its acquisition. By 2007, the channel was available in more than 83 million homes. On April 4, 2012, CMT announced its first
adult animated series,
Bounty Hunters; and
Trinity 911, a 10-episode "workplace docu-comedy".
Trinity 911 was later renamed
Big Texas Heat and was removed from the schedule after airing four episodes. On June 10, 2016, CMT announced that they would pick up the
ABC series
Nashville following its cancellation. The network would order a
fifth season of 22 episodes.
Restructuring (2017–present) In 2017, as part of Viacom's restructuring plans, CMT would begin a transition back to unscripted programming. As a result,
Nashville's sixth season would also be its last. As part of its shift back to unscripted programming, CMT announced
Music City in September 2017, a reality series created by
Adam DiVello of
The Hills and
Laguna Beach fame. Set in Nashville, the show features Bryant Lowry, a drummer in the Nashville pop band Jet Black Alley Cat. The series premiered on March 1, 2018. In 2019, Viacom acquired
Pluto TV, and launched several CMT-branded channels, including a channel focused on
Western genre movies (CMT Westerns) and a channel dedicated to
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team. In October 2021, CMT picked up the second season of
The Last Cowboy—a reality series by
Yellowstone co-creator
Taylor Sheridan. The program had moved from
Paramount Network following abandoned plans to relaunch the outlet as a movie network. == Programming ==