After years of competition for audience share, MTV Networks Europe eventually acquired VIVA on January 14, 2005, after it had exhausted its own efforts for superior ratings.

MTV operated VIVA channels in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Executives at US media giant Time Warner, keen on increasing their market share of its music repertoire and business in Germany, planned the new TV station in 1992.

Time Warner executives Tom McGrath and Peter Bogner assembled a group of record labels that included its very own Warner Music, EMI Music, Polygram Records and Sony Television along with Frank Otto, Apax Partners, and Austrian producers Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher of DoRo Productions.

Undeterred by this, Time Warner executives Tom McGrath and Peter Bogner, along with their competitors Sony, PolyGram and EMI Music, and media executive Michael Oplesch (VIVA GF, MTV GF, MME GF), founded producer Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, the founders of the TV production company Me, Myself & Eye (MME), Christoph Post, Jörg A. Hoppe and Marcus O. Rosenmüller, and the media lawyer Helge Sasse the Viva Medien GmbH.

The first (and subsequently last in 2018) music video played was "Zu geil für diese Welt" (Too Awesome for This World).

With Dieter Gorny eventually as its second managing director on board, VIVA applied for cable carriage licenses in the various German states.

[clarification needed] Before launching the channel, the labels offered to fund MTV in a German-speaking version but were rejected by MTV management at the time, as it espoused a "one world, one language" programming philosophy (at least in Europe, as the Latin American channels used Spanish and Portuguese).

VIVA was widely perceived as the more mainstream-oriented channel for younger viewers, while MTV Germany was directed at youths and young adults with some edgier programming.

On June 24, 2004, VIVA was acquired (for the sum of €310 million) by Viacom International, which also owns MTV, thus ending the VIVA-MTV rivalry and fostering cooperation instead.

Although the new owners had outlined that, with four channels under their helm, they were going to "offer a greater variety of content for a wider public and a larger range of tastes" while still promising to continue the "strong national and cultural identity" of the channel,[8] Viacom introduced a programming scheme that allowed the station to be run by just 40 people, making many previous employees redundant.

Shortly after, the channel aired end-of-broadcast shows, featuring several music artists, former hosts and other celebrities (including DJ BoBo, Loona, Alex Christensen, Udo Lindenberg and Oliver Pocher) saying their goodbyes.

After the end-of-broadcast specials concluded, the channel aired the music video of "Zu geil für diese Welt" by Die Fantastischen Vier (which was also the first music video that was aired back in 1993) and then faded to a black screen featuring the old 2002-2004 VIVA logo with the words "Rest In Peace" and "1993-2018" below.

Shortly after, the channel faded to dark, followed by the startup of Comedy Central, officially ending 25 years of broadcast.