MTV is a 24-hour general entertainment channel specialising in music and youth culture programming which serves Australia and New Zealand. It is operated by parent company Paramount Networks UK & Australia headquartered in London with a local office at Network 10's headquarters in Sydney. History MTV on the Nine Network The "MTV" brand was launched in Australia during April 1987 as a music program that aired late on Friday and Saturday nights for its full six-year run on the free-to-air Nine Network. The program was hosted by Richard Wilkins and Joy Smithers with music news from Alison Drower. Its competitors at the time were ABC TV's Rage (which also started in April 1987) and Network Ten's Video Hits (which started in February 1987). MTV Australia's focus was predominantly on Australian, British, Canadian and American artists and the program rarely played other forms of rock and pop music. The program presented a mixture of music videos, interviews and segments, and depended heavily on imported US content. In its early years it also showed the MTV USA game show Remote Control. The program was discontinued in 1993 when Nine chose not to renew the licence with Viacom. Nine said the axing was due to high production and licensing costs. Saul Shtein brought MTV to Australia with Richard Wilkins. ARC Music Television "ARC Music Television", owned by Austereo, was launched three years after MTV ended on the Nine Network on 14 June 1996 in a joint venture with, then, music giant Austereo and Village Roadshow through Optus Television to become a twenty-four-hour music channel playing pop music and airing original programming. After a year on the air the network was approached by MTV Networks in the US and through a deal once again with Austereo, Village Roadshow Entertainment and Optus vision ARC was re-branded as MTV Australia. Re-launch and expansion Five months after the initial announcement of ARC's re-branding, MTV Australia was officially re-launched on Optus Television on 20 March 1997. The channel originally produced local programmes but due to cost cutting the channel aired mostly American content. In December 2002 MTV was added to the Foxtel platform and was added in 2004 to the Austar platform. In the same year the channel set up MTV Networks Australia, which began work on launching its own original programming with the launch of the Australian version of the hit American show TRL on 10 September