Country Music Television

For the disease CMT see Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

Country Music Television or CMT as it often referred to as, is a country music oriented cable television channel. Programming includes music videos, taped concerts, movies, and biographies of country stars of past and present. CMT's owner is MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom.

CMT was started in 1983 to compete with The Nashville Network (TNN), until Gaylord Entertainment Company (then-owner of TNN) bought the financially-strapped network in the early 1990s. CMT was positioned to play 24-hour country music videos, while TNN was geared toward programming lending itself to a "country lifestyle". In 1995, the networks were sold to Westinghouse, which formed the CBS Cable division. Viacom eventually purchased CBS, assuming ownership of CMT and TNN and folding them into the MTV Networks stable. In 2000, Viacom changed the focus/format of TNN, eventually renaming it Spike TV. Since then, CMT has become a hybrid of its former self and the former TNN, now programming shows both country music-oriented and country lifestyle-oriented, as well as old shows and movies that prominently feature country or southern-rock music, such as "Freebird: The Movie" and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Its main competitor now is the Great American Country network, or "GAC", owned by Scripps .

External Links

Official site