The early years 120 Minutes began on March 10, 1986, at 1:00 a.m.
Eastern Time. For the first ten years of
120 Minutes, viewers could see artists as varied as
Kate Bush,
The Ramones,
Morrissey,
Kitchens of Distinction and
Hüsker Dü. From mid-1988 to 1990, a weeknight companion titled
PostModern MTV aired Mondays through Thursdays from 11:30 pm to midnight. This was followed in the mid-1990s by its better known spiritual successor,
Alternative Nation, which had a similar emphasis on more mainstream-leaning alternative acts such as
INXS and
U2.
From MTV to MTV2 The show began featuring more mainstream artists in the late 1990s,
Cancellation Having been gradually relegated to a late night time slot since 2002, the show was canceled with no formal announcement from MTV2 on May 4, 2003. In the final episode, the then host
Jim Shearer shared the screen with the show's creator
Dave Kendall, as well as
Matt Pinfield.
120 Minutes also aired as a two-minute clip in a series called
120 Seconds which can be seen on MTVhive.com.
120 Minutes was removed from the
MTV2 schedule without announcement. The last airing was February 1, 2013. A two-hour indie block called
Artists to Watch took its slot during the same Friday 7 a.m.–9 a.m. ET block. However, that program stopped airing . , MTV's sister channel
MTV Classic (formerly called
VH1 Classic) airs a similar program with the name
120 Minutes (formerly called "The Alternative") on its Saturday/Sunday and Sunday/Monday midnight time slot (on which the original show aired). This version of the show, however, has no host and highlights more well established alternative artists of the 1980s and 1990s; mostly replaying videos that originally aired on MTV. ==List of
120 Minutes hosts==