Informed by consultants that viewers and advertisers perceived Spike TV’s programming as being 'lowbrow, violent, and reliant on sex appeal,” Viacom deliberately chose to lean into and embrace the lowbrow – by creating and pushing into every cable household the crudest, most disgusting excesses of sexism and stereotyping imaginable. As a result, Viacom decided to change directions again (though this time, without changing the network’s name). Such programming was inoffensive, but did not exactly light up the network’s ratings. At first, Spike continued to run the same innocuous fare as it did as The National Network in particular, it devoted up to eight hours a day to reruns of the various Star Trek franchises. Then, in 2003, the channel was rebranded again, as Spike TV. While keeping the initials “TNN” intact, Viacom changed the channel’s name to The National Network, becoming a general-interest channel featuring reruns of popular sitcoms and other programming. In 2000, TNN was purchased by Viacom, which already owned its long-time competitor Country Music Television. Launched in 1983 as The Nashville Network, the channel focused on country-western music videos, concerts, and country-themed programming. In fact, throughout its history, the network has gone through a variety of names and images. This isn’t the first time such a rebranding has occurred. The sixth, the Paramount Network (exploiting Viacom’s links with the old Paramount film studios), while unfamiliar to viewers, is not quite a newcomer Paramount Network is simply the most recent “rebranding of the Viacom-owned basic cable network Spike TV, which became Paramount Network on Thursday, January 18 th. Five are longtime Viacom mainstays: Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Comedy Central, MTV, and BET. Viacom has vowed to focus attention and resources on six “core” networks. Reeling under the double-barelled assault of the rise of streaming services and its own decline in viewership and advertiser revenue (including some cable companies outright refusing to carry its networks) one-time cable giant Viacom has been in a process of reinventing itself, out of desperation to attract fleeing viewers. Cable’s “First Network for Men” is no more.

Channel that became spike tv