Twenty years after MTV played its first music video by a little-known British band claiming that "video killed the radio star," the channel has found a home in Canada.

Calgary-based Craig Broadcast Systems signed a licencing agreement with MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom Inc., to use the channel's name and content less than two weeks before its launch. MTV is currently broadcast in 140 countries to 363-million households.

Under CRTC regulations, the channel must broadcast 50 per cent Canadian content, and only 10 per cent of its air time can be spent for music videos - making it not that much like its U.S. cousin.

But it will still draw the eyeballs, said one industry analyst who insisted that the key to the channels' success is branding. The 12-to-24-year-old viewer that MTV Canada is after will already know the concept behind MTV: This is a generation that didn't know life without rock videos.

Craig had a licence with the CRTC for a teen channel called Connect. When the MTV deal surfaced, the Calgary broadcaster realized its digital channel could be seen in as many as two-million Canadian homes.

"We're confident we will have carriage from coast to coast," Drew Craig, president and chief executive officer of the family-owned broadcaster, said when the deal was announced.

Mr. Craig said MTV will meet all of Connect's obligations, including a commitment to show 50-per-cent Canadian content during the broadcasting day. He argued that MTV airs fewer music videos than people realize.

"We are going to live up to the letter of the licence," he said.

Under the terms of the Viacom agreement, Calgary-based Craig has Canadian rights to four U.S. channels, including MTV. Craig, owner of five local TV stations across Western Canada, plans to launch three of the MTV channels as digital services in about two weeks.

In addition to MTV, Craig will offer MTV's TV Land, an old-classics service, and a second music channel that has yet to be determined. Craig plans to launch its fourth and fifth MTV services at an as yet undetermined date.

The new channel appears to be a direct competitor of MuchMusic, broadcaster CHUM Ltd.'s popular music specialty channel. But the self-described "nation's music station" says Craig's MTV service must follow the CRTC's strict terms of licensing for Connect. For example, the channel's broadcasting day can feature no more than 10-per-cent music videos.

"I certainly don't think what you will see is what people call MTV," said David Kines, vice-president and general manager of Toronto's MuchMusic, referring to the CRTC regulations. "You can call this channel whatever you want to call it but you still have to address the terms of licence."

In the past 20 years, MTV has had more than its share of one-shots: The B-52s, Milli Vanilli, Falco. And it influenced the way young, impressionable American minds act, talk and dress.

In more recent years, the channel has seen fit to become increasingly involved in the U.S. political arena, albeit on its own terms. In the 1992 U.S. presidential election, voters had a choice between stodgy Republican incumbent George Bush and a boyish country-boy Democrat named Bill Clinton, who showed up to play saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. In the months before the election, MTV upped its political coverage and launched its Choose or Lose campaign, which implored young voters to hit the polls and made use of A-list music stars in public-service announcements. One of the most memorable had Madonna wrapped in a U.S. flag and saying: "If you don't vote, you're going to get a spankie."

More recently, MTV has changed its focus. For the past several years, it has been edging slowly out of the all-video format (which has moved over to its sister channel MTV2) in favour of original programming, such as the reality series Real World. MTV Networks says that these days, 25 per cent of the programming on MTV is the non-music video.