e for each operator's agreement not to air Turner's Cable Music Channel. Cable Music Channel began on-air operations October 26, 1984 despite an inability to clear ten million subscribers at start-up. Turner's initial claims placed Cable Music Channel's availability at two-point-three million homes, though audits later showed that the service never cleared more than three-hundred-fifty thousand subscribers. Ted Turner pulled the plug on Cable Music Channel by the end of November 1984, agreeing to a one-million-dollar buyout of the service by MTV; for its money MTV received only the Cable Music Channel name, a list of CMC's subscribers and five-hundred-thousand dollars of advertising time on Turner Broadcasting's channels. By the time of Cable Music Channel's demise, MTV enjoyed a subscriber base of twenty-three-point-five million. Originally planned as counter-programming to Turner's Cable Music Channel, WASEC went ahead with the plans to launch the adult-oriented, middle-of-the-road music video service Video Hits One, known by its acronym VH-1, on New Year's Day 1985. The twenty-four-hour-a -day music video channel targeted at twenty-five to forty-nine-year-olds debuted with thirteen advertisers signed on and a subscriber base of three million. Another way MTV dealt with challenges from other music video programming outlets is exclusivity agreements with record labels for music videos. Beginning in 1983, MTV entered into agreements with many record labels providing the cable channel with a percentage of each label's video clips on an exclusive basis for a thirty-day period. In exchange for the exclusive broadcast rights for approximately thirty-percent of a record label's video clips, the labels (including CBS, Geffen, MCA and RCA) received compensation from MTV in the form of cash and advertising time. Reactions to the exclusivity deals between MTV and the record labels ranged from indifference to outrage ...
