CheddarU is an American closed-circuit

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

available on 600 U.S. college campuses owned by

Cheddar Cheddar most often refers to either: *Cheddar cheese *Cheddar, Somerset, the village after which Cheddar cheese is named Cheddar may also refer to: Places * Cheddar, Ontario, Canada * Cheddar Yeo, a river which flows through Cheddar Gorge and t ...

, as part of internally originated cable systems that are a part of on-campus housing or college closed-circuit television systems. In 2018, Cheddar acquired MTV Networks on Campus, a former division of

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 ...

, to launch the channel. Cheddar also acquired

RateMyProfessors.com RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) is a review site, founded in May 1999 by John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park, California, which allows college and university students to assign ratings to professors and campuses of American, Canadi ...

, which was part of the MTVU division since 2007, in October 2018.

History

MTV Networks' proposal for a channel targeting college students, tentatively called MTV University, became public in February 2002. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', the channel was seeking to compete with

Burly Bear Network The Burly Bear Network was an American cable TV channel targeted at 18- to 24-year-old college students founded in 1994. The company was created by four friends from Connecticut, Danny Stein, Brian Nurenberg, Danny Ameri and James Mairs and led b ...

, which was available to 450 campuses and had been attracting nearly a million viewers a week, along with College Television Network (CTN) and the most recent entrant at the time,

Zilo Zilo Networks Inc. was an entertainment and marketing television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programm ...

. Seven months later, after CTN ended up in financial trouble and as National Lampoon had just acquired the defunct Burly Bear, MTV Networks acquired CTN for $15 million. In February 2008, MTV Networks discontinued VH1 Uno, a sparsely viewed

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

music video channel, and replaced it with MTVU, to expand the channel into traditional cable distribution. In May 2018, Cheddar TV acquired

's MTV Networks on Campus; outlets associated with that service will be converted to carry CheddarU, a new secondary feed which will stream content from the flagship financial-news streaming service and segments from Cheddar Big News to 9 million students on more than 600 campuses; universities which previously screened MTV Networks on Campus will continue to receive CheddarU at no cost in exchange for access to the campus. MTVU continues to be available to linear TV platforms via Viacom. Universities that qualify, can receive the CheddarU service for free. CheddarU is part of the ChedNet division of Cheddar, a division focusing on bringing the service to public screens such as gyms, bars, airports, hotels and other public venues.

References

External links

* Altice USA Television channels and stations established in 2002 English-language television stations in the United States Former Viacom subsidiaries Companies based in New York City 2018 mergers and acquisitions {{US-tv-stub