MTV Europe
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| TV channel | |
| Program type | Special-interest program (entertainment) |
| reception | Cable , satellite , IPTV |
| Image resolution | ( Entry missing ) |
| Start of transmission | August 1, 1987 |
| owner | Viacom |
| List of TV channels | |
| Website | |
MTV Europe is the European version of the US television station MTV in English. Originally broadcast all over Europe, the area of distribution was reduced more and more when MTV switched to starting regional branches in some European countries in 1997. Today MTV Europe is still broadcast in about 20 countries, mainly in Eastern Europe and the Middle East . MTV Europe is mainly managed from the European headquarters of the Viacom group in London and Warsaw .
history
MTV Europe was started in 1987 from Amsterdam under the direction of Texan Mark Booth and was initially a cooperation project between Viacom and the British telecommunications group BT. MTV Europe has been wholly owned by Viacom since 1991.
All over Europe, and especially in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the broadcaster had a long battle with the various media outlets, cable networks and the former Deutsche Bundespost in order to be activated. The German music industry, which also controls the business in Switzerland and Austria, feared that MTV Europe would lead to further Americanization of the scene. MTV Communication Director Christine Gorham brought in the initiator of the Metal Hammer magazine , Wilfried F. Rimensberger, who was able to break the ice and, as a network development consultant, put the music broadcaster in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on track and popular artists such as Peter Maffay and Udo Lindenberg or Dieter Meier coupled with MTV actions.
Despite the constant interventions by Rimensberger and other non-American employees, MTV Europe pursued a very Anglophile style of music, which was only taken back a little after the departure of the first MTV Europe managing director Mark Booth through better localization, i.e. also with offices and studios in Germany has been. This policy of localization, which Rimensberger had proposed time and again before, but could not be implemented under Mark Booth, was strongly promoted throughout Europe by the new MTV Europe managing director and Australian Brent Hanson.
To compensate for the higher costs, MTV reception in Europe became chargeable for the first time on July 1, 1995. MTV argued that this way you could "send digitally faster". The annual fee for satellite reception was relatively cheap at around 25 euros a year, but a decoder ( Videocrypt I or II) had to be purchased. The marketing turned out to be unsuccessful, since the technical range via satellite collapsed almost completely.
At this point in time, Dieter Gorny was already established on the market with the German-language competitor product VIVA, with the support of several record labels , even if not in the popular Astra satellite position. After MTV Europe could only be received in encrypted form, the competing broadcaster VIVA in Germany had an easy time and was able to take over the MTV segment, as many cable operators now switched to VIVA instead of MTV.
Due to the success of VIVA, the executive floor of MTV Europe realized that the strategy of broadcasting centrally from London had been wrong. With the start of MTV Germany in 1997, MTV Europe began to regionalize. As a result, around three hours of German-language MTV programming was broadcast in Germany on the otherwise English-language MTV Europe. The paid reception was discontinued and MTV was again freely available. In the same year, MTV UK & Ireland started a regional version for the United Kingdom and Ireland .
In 2005 MTV Adria started and replaced the feed of MTV Europe in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. On January 1, 2018, this was discontinued and MTV Europe returned in the countries concerned.
Today there are dozens of national branches of MTV. The English-language MTV Europe is still mainly distributed in countries for which no independent country version has been designed or the independent country version has been discontinued for economic reasons. As of 2018, these are the countries Armenia , Azerbaijan , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Belarus , Bulgaria , the Czech Republic (independent country version discontinued at the end of 2013), Estonia , Faroe Islands , Georgia , Greece , Iceland , Kazakhstan , Croatia , Kosovo , Latvia , Lithuania , Luxembourg , Macedonia , Moldova , Malta , Serbia , Slovenia , Slovakia , Turkey (independent country version discontinued in 2011) and Ukraine as well as for the Middle East .
In July 2011, MTV Europe also got the new international logo and on-air design.
Programs
MTV Europe's programming is largely the same as that of the other MTV versions, with a high proportion of reality programs. Music programs therefore only play a subordinate role in the program and are limited to the early hours of the morning.