Launched in December 2000, RFD-TV is the nation's first 24-hour television network featuring programming focused on the agribusiness, equine and the rural lifestyle, along with traditional country music and entertainment.

Mornings and the early part of daytime feature syndicated newsmagazines and a five-hour block of news, weather (forecasting services on the network are outsourced to The Weather Channel) and agricultural commodity market prices, in the basic format of an American cable news outlet.

[9] With an average of 136,000 viewers in 2016, RFD-TV has some of the highest viewership relative to availability compared to other "ultra-niche" networks with similar or wider distribution owned by major corporations.

[15] The Federal Communications Commission struck down this effort in 2007 due to the channel's reliance on commercial television content.

[16] The channel was then restructured as a for-profit enterprise, for which it rented a Nashville studio and hired experienced TV executives including Ed Frazier, former Liberty Sports CEO.

[15] The acquisition of Imus in the Morning in 2007 after over a decade on MSNBC was designed to retain its satellite carriage after the FCC ruling as well as convince additional cable providers to add RFD-TV to its channel lineups.

RFD began a rural news department in late 2009 with bureaus in London and Washington, DC.

[12] Rural Media contracted with Sony Pictures Television in September 2013 to handle RFD-TV's and other properties' national ad sale.

[22] A Canadian version of the channel was launched on February 1, 2020, on Shaw Direct television systems through a partnership with Rural Media.

The video simulcast of the program ended its run on RFD-TV on August 28, 2009, and moved to Fox Business Network several weeks later.

[3] One of the first programs to be aired on RFD-TV was The Big Joe Polka Show, a polka and dance variety program hosted by Omaha resident Joseph "Big Joe" Siedlik, which continued to be popular among the network's estimated (approximately) 40 million+ available households until it ended its run on January 1, 2011.

[25] In 2011, the court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed RFD-TV's lawsuit as being without merit.

Other programs added in Winter 2007-2008 included a revival of Crook & Chase (which returned to TNN [now Heartland] upon its relaunch in 2012) and Bluegrass & Backroads.

[43][44] Greg Peterson has been covering farm equipment auctions for various industry magazines for more than 25 years and did the same during six seasons of RFD's "Machinery Show."

Each episode features Peterson traveling to a farm machinery auction, where he meets some of the people who attend the sales where items like tractors and skid steers are sold.

[11] Rural Media Group bought the Country Tonite/Ray Stevens Theater with 2000 seats in Branson, Missouri, and renamed it the RFD-TV Theatre on March 24, 2007.

[21] FamilyNet was changed over to a western lifestyle network on July 1, 2017, tapping RFD-TV programming to start.

[50] Rural Media Group in early 2018 purchased the Imus Ranch, near Santa Fe, as a television production base for its two TV channels' programs.

Best of America by Horseback, Debbie Dunning’s Dude Ranch Round-Up, and Gentle Giants were programs selected to film there starting in March 2019.

[52] Patrick Gottsch, the founder and president of RFD-TV and Rural Media Group, died on May 18, 2024, at the age of 70.

We will now be able to strengthen our programming and dig deeper into our core mission to reconnect city with country, bringing stories of agriculture, rural life, conservation, and land stewardship to more people than ever before along with an expansion in music and entertainment, as Rural Media Group will continue operating the Auction Barn Studio in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards in addition to its studios on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee.