The station was acquired from Ermita Electronics Corporation in July 1996, which initially owned the frequency of the station that began airing in May 1992 from a densely populated commercial area in Quezon City with a rebroadcast of MTV Asia, then telecasting from the STAR TV platform.

It was later showing Channel [V] refeeds from 1994 onwards as MTV made the decision to split from STAR and form its own satellite TV portal in Asia.

Five years later, MTV Asia acquired a new local UHF frequency, Channel 41 owned by Nation Broadcasting Corporation (which is now One Sports, now co-owned by TV5) and Studio 23 formally became a full-fledged station, adopting rebroadcasts of its in-house cable channel Myx to fill in the void left by MTV Asia, and came up with intensified programming led by the popular reality TV game show Survivor, and several top rate US shows like 7th Heaven, Will and Grace and Charmed, among others.

Sports programming in Channel 23 was fully expanded with the launch of ABS-CBN Sports+Action on January 18, 2014, replacing Studio 23.

On May 5, 2020, S+A Manila went off-air due to the cease and desist order from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) after its franchise expiration.