Country Music Television, or CMT, is an American country music-oriented cable television network. Programming includes music videos, taped concerts, movies, biographies of country music stars, game shows, and reality programs. CMT is owned and operated by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom.

CMT was launched on March 5, 1983 at 6:19 PM CST, created and founded by Glenn D. Daniels and uplinked from the Video World Productions facility in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Daniels put together the investor group of Telestar Corporation and the penny stock company Blinder and Robinson in a 3-way ownership split.

Glenn D. Daniels was the creator, founder, Program Director and first President of the network, originally called CMTV but always "Country Music Television." (The "V" was dropped in response to a complaint by competitor MTV). CMT beat its chief competitor, The Nashville Network (TNN), on the air by two days. CMT was positioned to play country music videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while TNN was geared toward programming lending itself to a "country lifestyle". The very first video clip to air on CMT was a performance clip of country music legend Faron Young's classic 1971 hit, "It's Four in the Morning".

Robert James "Bob" Ritchie (born January 17, 1971), known by his stage name Kid Rock, is an American singer-songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist and rapper with five Grammy Awards nominations. Kid Rock released several studio albums that mostly went unnoticed before his 1998 record Devil Without a Cause, released with Atlantic Records, sold 11 million albums behind the hits, "Bawitdaba", "Cowboy", and "Only God Knows Why". In 2000, he released The History of Rock, a compilation of remixed and remastered versions of songs from previous albums as well as the hit single, "American Bad Ass" and the previously unreleased "Abortion".

Kid Rock released the follow-up in 2001, Cocky. After a slow start, his country-flavored hit "Picture" with Sheryl Crow resurrected the album and it went gold as a single and pushed the album's sales over 5 million. It was followed by 2003's self-titled release, which went platinum in the USA and reached No. 8 on the Billboard charts. In 2006 he released Live Trucker, a greatest hits live album that went mostly unnoticed.

Carrie Marie Underwood (born March 10, 1983) is an American country singer, songwriter and actress who rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol, in 2005. Underwood has since become a multi-platinum selling recording artist, a winner of several Grammy Awards, Billboard Music Awards and American Music Awards, a Golden Globe Award nominee, a three-time Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Female Vocalist winner, and a two-time ACM Entertainer of the Year. She is the first-ever female artist to win back-to-back Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards for Entertainer of the Year (2009/10). Underwood was inducted into and became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2008. She was also inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2009.Billboard named Underwood Country Music's reigning Queen in 2012.