In 2003, co-founders Seth Unger and Arick Wierson – both aides to Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg – launched NYC-TV, which replaced "Crosswalks Television".

Unger and Wierson set out to create a slew of new, slickly-produced shows about life in New York, alongside live coverage of NYC press conferences and hearings.

[8] Cities such as Seoul, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Los Angeles have expressed interest in replicating the station's success.

In April 2009, Trevor Scotland, then-COO of NYC Media Group, was arrested on charges of embezzling $60,000 of advertising money from the network, along with an accomplice, Vincent R. Taylor.

Scotland pled guilty to charges of embezzlement and wire fraud,[14] and was sentenced in March 2010 to 15 months in prison for his role in the fiasco; by this time, the NYC Media unit had been reassigned from the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) to the Mayor's Office of Film and Broadcasting (though the move was not publicized at the time).

[15][16] It was suspected that this executive upheaval played a role in the cancellation of music series New York Noise (a show created during Wierson's tenure), though this was never confirmed outright.