Ah, yes, VH-1. Like MTV, it is also owned by Viacom and was (at first) a channel for music videos. It was created to compete with a channel called Cable Music Channel, but it was shut down before VH-1 even came into existence as a sister network to MTV. The main difference between pre-1990s MTV and VH-1 was audience: MTV was for teenagers, VH-1 was for older adults. So you would see people more like Mariah Carey.
VH-1 slowly headed towards appealing to the younger audience around the Nineties, and started adding a few shows. Unlike MTV when it started adding more shows, though, VH-1's shows were still very pertinent to music. On VH-1, you could see Pop Up Video, which WAS music videos but with visual commentary, and Behind the Music, a documentary-styled show about famous musicians.
Alas, VH-1 has also recently drifted away from what it once used to, but only in a somewhat similar fashion. This is because VH-1 expanded into covering pop culture; the most notable consequence of this is the "I Love The" series, which consisted of a few documentary miniseries covering a specific decade (a few exist for the '70s, a few more for the '80s and the '90s, and even "I Love the New Millenium."). Of course, it is necessary to mention the reality shows on VH-1 and especially to compare them to MTV's. In maintaining its recent focus on pop culture, its shows focus on former celebrities like Hulk Hogan. The second most important thing about modern VH-1 is that these are actually successful, with the finale of Flavor of Love, starring Flava Flav, having 6,000,000 viewers. Certainly better than MTV's shows about "teenage girls who feel the need to whine despite being richer than most countries." (quote taken from the TVTropes page for VH-1. I thought it was good and fitting.)
Of course, the first most important thing about modern VH-1 is that you can see music videos on VH-1...
in the afternoon. Yeah, you know you like my usage of bold, italics, and underline all at the same time.
-Erich
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