As part of VH-1's rebranding as "VH1: Music First" in 1994, the channel launched a new show, the
VH1 Top 10 Countdown, that counted down the top 10 music videos played on the channel each week. A combination of record sales, radio airplay, video spins,
message board posts, and
conventional mail decided the order of the countdown. A rotating cast of
VJs picked up hosting duties for the show over the years. The show expanded from 10 to 20 music videos, becoming
VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown, on April 13, 2001. Each week, the show was broadcast from another location around
New York, often at the
Virgin Records store in
Union Square. Following a decline in the show's relevance, popular
Survivor contestant Jenna Lewis was hired to host the show in 2001. After her departure from the show, from 2002 to 2006, the show was usually hosted by either
Rachel Perry,
Bradford How, or Aamer Haleem, but occasionally another VJ would fill in. At this point, the show's first airing would premiere on Saturdays at 3:00 AM Eastern, then later at 9:00 AM Eastern, followed by additional airings on Sunday Mornings at 8:00 AM Eastern, and Tuesday mornings at 9:00 AM Eastern. On July 22, 2005, VH1 moved the show's first airing of the week to Friday evenings at 6:00 PM Eastern, followed by additional airings on weekend mornings. The show became known as the
VSPOT Top 20 Video Countdown on April 7, 2006, and had received a new on-air look, a new studio at the
MTV headquarters in
Times Square (where
TRL located at), and a new host,
Matt Pinfield, the venerable VJ from both
MTV and
MTV2 in the 1990s and former host of MTV's
120 Minutes. In a fundamental change from the show's older format of compiling the top 20 videos of the week, online votes resolved the entire order of the countdown. Fan participation was introduced via
VSPOT, VH1's online music video outlet. On the week of July 15, 2006, the show stopped airing on Friday evenings. On the September 16, 2006, episode, Pinfield announced that a video would be retired after being on the countdown for 20 weeks. Before this time, videos could remain on the countdown for as long as seemed appropriate, though almost all were gone by the 24th week. One notable exception, however, was
Keane's "
Somewhere Only We Know", which remained in the countdown for 28 non-consecutive weeks in two countdown runs. The video only peaked at #8, and its second wind was caused by the popularity of the VH1.com live version of the video. After Pinfield did not show up for a few recordings of the show on October 7, 2006, former host Aamer Haleem returned to host the show once again. Starting the week of February 17, 2007, after a mass layoff of music producers at MTV Networks (now known as "
Paramount Media Networks"), the show left MTV Studios and became broadcast from another location every week, as it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade), starting at
New York's Grand Central Terminal. Haleem continued to host the show every week from another location until August 4, 2007, when he hosted his final episode. Alison Becker became the new host on August 11, 2007. Around this time, the VSPOT online video center was renamed to "Video.VH1.com," so the series readded its original title,
VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. Since then, each episode has usually featured one or two interviews with all celebrities of latest notoriety who either have a video, movie, or TV show of interest at the time. The countdown sometimes has videos high in its countdown despite virtually has no radio airplay for the song. One example is
Bret Michaels'
Go That Far which was directed by
Shane Stanley. This video spent 12 weeks on the countdown and bowed out at #7. The video supported Michaels' show
Rock of Love which is shown on the network.
David Cook and
David Archuleta, the seventh-season winner and runner-up of
American Idol were the first guest stars to introduce their own music video at the #1 spot. Archuleta introduced his video "
Crush" on November 15, 2008. The following week, on November 22, 2008, Cook made a guest appearance to introduce his music video for "
Light On" which was making its countdown debut at #1. Rock group
Shinedown joined the list of introducing a song at #1 when their video for "
Second Chance" reached #1 on May 16, 2009. David Cook introduced "
Come Back To Me" at #1 on May 30, 2009, making Cook the first to introduce two music videos at #1 on two occasions. Later in 2009, rock group
Daughtry introduced their music video for "
No Surprise" at #1 on July 18, 2009, and British pop singer
Jay Sean introduced his music video for "
Down" at #1 on October 17, 2009. After four months of no one introducing their own video at #1, Pop-rock singer
Adam Lambert would also join the list as he introduced his video, "
Whataya Want from Me," at #1 on February 20, 2010. At VH1's "Winter Wonderland" countdown special, Ireland-based rock group
The Script introduced their video,
Breakeven at #1 on March 6, 2010. For five months, no one had introduced their song at #1 until August 21, 2010, when hip-hop rapper
B.o.B introduced
Airplanes at #1. Two months later, on October 9, R&B/pop singer
Bruno Mars introduced his #1 single, "
Just the Way You Are," at #1. Following a four to five-month absence of an artist introduction at #1, on February 26, 2011, British pop singer
Adele introduced "
Rolling in the Deep" at #1. On November 5, 2011, pop singer
Kelly Clarkson introduced "
Mr. Know It All" at #1. On March 24, 2012, British pop singer
Neon Hitch introduced "
Get Yourself Back Home" at #1. On July 27, 2013, R&B singer
Robin Thicke introduced "
Blurred Lines" at #1. Since then, no other artists have introduced their own videos at #1. At the end of the January 3, 2009 broadcast, Becker announced that it would be her last show as host. The new host,
Jim Shearer, taped his first show on January 5, 2009, at the Virgin Megastore at Union Square in New York, for broadcast on January 10. In 2009, VH1 took faster control of the songs played on the show, with the number of videos available to be voted onto the
Top 20 Countdown reduced to less than 30, and several videos were removed from the voting list while they were still in the top half of the countdown. There was also less competition regarding songs trying to earn a #1 spot due to the lack of song competitions in 2009, as well as four consecutive brand new #1 videos in January 2010. On September 18, 2010, the show expanded from two hours to two and a half hours. It returned to the original two-hour format on February 11, 2012. On May 14, 2011, the show celebrated its 800th episode. This makes the countdown the longest-running, music-related program on any channel ever in television history. The countdown's 800th #1 video was "Rolling in the Deep" from Adele. On May 11, 2013, the show reached it's 900th episode, and to celebrate, various clips and bloopers from throughout the show's history were featured, and Jim Shearer even wore a tuxedo and tie to commemorate the occasion. The 900th #1 video on the countdown was "
Just Give Me A Reason" from
Pink featuring
Nate Ruess. In the past, viewers could choose up to 20 videos to vote for at one time by dragging a song into spaces numbered 1-20. Voting was unlimited, allowing viewers to vote however many times they wanted, but in mid-2011, the voting format changed, and viewers could only vote for one video at a time. Votes were also limited to 20 times per day. In 2014, the show's voting was taken away, reverting to the original format of record sales, streaming, radio airplay, video spins, chart performance, and social media hype. Jim Shearer hosted his final episode on December 20, 2014, since his contract was not renewed for 2015. This episode was the annual year-end edition of the countdown, featuring the top twenty songs from throughout the year. At the end of the episode, right after Shearer did his usual sign-off, a slide was displayed featuring relaxing outdoor stock footage and ambient noise, and a text thanking Shearer for 5 years of hosting the countdown. From January 10 to April 25, 2015, musical artists and other entertainment personalities guest-hosted the show.
Ingrid Michaelson was the first artist to guest-host the show, and was even asked to come back to host another episode on March 21, 2015. Other celebrity hosts included the likes of
Christina Perri,
Nikki Glaser, and
Gavin DeGraw, among others. Comedian Mike Kelton was the final guest co-host on April 25, 2015. Shannon Coffey was announced as the new host on April 20, 2015, and officially began hosting on May 2, 2015. The show was renamed "The 20," keeping the same video countdown, but introducing new segments and a new studio. On November 28, 2015, the final episode of "The 20" aired without ceremony, and the program was canceled without any publicity nor statement as to why. An end-of-year special aired on December 19, 2015, in the same timeslot called
The 2015 Year-End Special hosted by a panel of hosts, but no video of the year was named, and it composed a countdown of 20 pop-culture moments instead of videos. As of January 2016, Paramount has dropped music videos from the VH1 schedule (the first being BET two years earlier in December with
106 & Park). As of February 2026, reruns of
Nick Cannon Presents: Wild 'n Out now air in the show's former timeslot. ==Special editions==