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 populatedcommercial area in Quezon City with a rebroadcast of MTV Asia, then telecasting from the STAR TV platform. It was later showing Channel V|Channel refeeds from 1994 onwards as MTV made the decision to split from STAR and form its own satellite TV portal in Asia. Just two years later in 1996, MTV Asia returned to the Philippine airwaves after establishing a new regional base in Singapore. ABS-CBN was picked as the broadcast arm of MTV Asia in the Philippines at the time, and Channel 23 started test broadcasts in September 1996 with rebroadcasts of the new MTV Asia from Singapore. A month later, it launched its own programming under the station name Studio 23 and adopted the slogan "Premium Television". It also became the first UHF TV station in Metro Manila to broadcast in full surround stereo, and the fourth television station in the country to broadcast in stereo. The station initially ran MTV rebroadcasts in the day, and ran its own shows at primetime. It also ran for 24 hours, but later reneging to a 21-hour broadcast, owing to financial limitations. That has been the broadcast arrangement ever since. 5 years later, MTV Asia acquired a new local UHF frequency, Channel 41 owned by Nation Broadcasting Corporation 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. By 2004, the channel opened its doors to Taglish programs. It also by that time adopted a new slogan, "Kabarkada Mo!". Previous to this trend, the station was already running its own English newscast, "News Central", from 2001 to 2010, effectively replacing the network's News 23. It also geared its mostly young viewers to trends in the tech world with "Digital World". With the intensified Taglish presence, Studio 23 today now has the nightly Tagalog gag newscast "Wazzup Wazzup", the interactive youth talk show "Y-Speak", and several others. It even provided support shows to its highly successful local reality programs "Pinoy Big Brother" and "Pinoy Dream Academy", both acquired from Endemol of the Netherlands and are big hits on Channel 2.
Expansion to sports programming
In 1998, ABS-CBN, through its sports division, ABS-CBN Sports, used mainly Studio 23 to highlight its own professional basketball league, the Metropolitan Basketball Association. The league adopted the home and away format used by the American professional league the National Basketball Association. It marked the network's first serious foray into sports programming. Later, that would be added by acquiring broadcast rights to the collegiate leagues UAAP and NCAA and the PBL. Today, it carries a wide variety of local sporting competition, many of which involved neighborhood schools and showcasing budding Filipino sports talents.
Sports programming in Channel 23 was fully expanded with the launch of ABS-CBN Sports+Action on January 18, 2014, replacing Studio 23 for reason that the now-defunct channel is associative to its predominant entertainment content. On August 29, 2016, in time with the National Heroes Day celebration, ABS-CBN Sports+Action was renamed as simply S+A. On May 5, 2020, S+A Manila went off the air as a result of the cease and desist order of the National Telecommunications Commission after the franchise expiration.
