Hit Video USA was a 24-hour music video television network based out of

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. The station debuted in 1985 as a low power

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth ...

in Houston, operating on channel 5 there as 'TV5'. From 1985 to 1993, the station was located on the 35th floor of the Allied Bank Plaza/First Interstate Plaza (now Wells Fargo Plaza), a skyscraper in Downtown Houston.

History

On September 17, 1987, a station spokesperson explained that the channel would sign off within 30 days unless it received $5 to $6 million in new equity.HIT VIDEO CITES NEED FOR MORE FUNDING TO STAY ON AIR
" ''

The Dallas Morning News ''The Dallas Morning News'' is a daily newspaper serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area of Texas, with an average print circulation of 65,369. It was founded on October 1, 1885 by Alfred Horatio Belo as a satellite publication of the ''Galvesto ...

''. September 18, 1987. Retrieved on April 8, 2010. "Hit Video, begun July 1985 as a music service on a Houston low-power television, started" and "A 24-hour music video service based in Houston, Hit Video USA, will go off the air in 30 days unless $5 million to $6 million in new equity can be raised, a spokesman for the company said Thursday." By 1990, it distributed music videos to 57 television stations in the United States. The venture removed obscenities from music. Across the country, several independent TV stations elected to carry the programming, along with numerous cable television systems. Original Veejays included Chris Kinkade, Suzanne Vafiadis, Greg Johnson, EJ Thacker, Karen Kay, Todd Stevens, Eric Easton, Betsy King and Dangerous Darren Burns.

Backlash

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

, alarmed by the competition, began making exclusive deals with record companies -- effectively blocking Hit Video USA from broadcasting some of the most popular videos ever made.

Shutdown

Hit Video USA owner Constance Wodlinger sued in federal court, claiming numerous violations of the nation's antitrust statutes. The litigation, protracted for many years by the lawyers, was finally settled out of court.

Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to: * Viacom (1952–2006), a former American media conglomerate * Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom * Viacom18, a joint venture between Par ...

, owner of MTV, bought out Wodlinger and closed the network down.

References

{{American broadcast television Television stations in Houston