Music Channels

By Daisy White

What are the main music channels out there to watch?

MUSIC CHANNELS

What are the main music channels out there to watch?

The original MTV was founded in 1981. It is an American basic cable and satellite television channel. Their headquarters are in New York City. MTV's purpose was to play music videos guided by tv. Originally their main demographic was young adults but today their programming is primarily targeted at teenagers and college-aged students. MTV was to be music tv, playing music videos 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their first aims were by 1984 to be airing a top 40 station. They said 'fresh faced young women and men' were hired to present the show.

MTV

Primarily, their aim was to air music videos on TV all day. However as their brand has expanded and they have got more popular, there are now sister channels that are able to show music videos all day that are genre specific therefore the channel MTV itself is more of an entertainment channel showing more than just music. They play shows such as:

PUNKD

JERSEY SHORE

EX ON THE BEACH

GEORDIE SHORE
CATFISH

Other sister programmes from MTV:

MTV
VH1
MTV Base
MTV Classic
MTV Dance
MTV Hits
MTV Music
MTV Rocks

The channel MTV has been a raging success. They hosted their first ever MTV awards ceremony in September 1984. The MTV VMA's are very popular having roughly 10 million people tune in annually and the popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine etc saw over 63 million interactions in the 2014 VMA's.

4 MUSIC

4 Music is an entertainment channel that is aired in the UK. The channel launched in August of 2008 replacing 'The Hits'. It is available on Freeview, Virgin Media and SKY. 4 Music are more musically orientated than MTV, playing shows such as:

UK HOT 40

KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS

PARTY DOWN SOUTH

4 MUSIC SHOWTIME

BOX UPFRONT

The channel has exclusive access to two of the hottest festivals in the UK. These are: V-Festival and T on The Beach.

he channel launched with an on-screen countdown counting down from ten minutes down to zero. During the countdown, clips from popular music videos were faded through the screen including clips from promotions for the channel.

KERRANG

Kerrang is a music video channel that launched in 2001. The programmes mainly foccused on nu metal and pop/punk. As of 2005, the channel solely airs music videos. They have an open schedule as they have a customer interactive text system where the viewer can request which songs are shown.

They sometimes break their show up into 30 minute segments of artists and air some of their songs.

Many of the videos shown are heavily censored to remove profanity, violence, and references to God and religion. The censorship usually takes the form of dubbing out the offending phrase or by blurring the picture.

Video countdowns are often shown. Different ones that have been shown include 'moshing anthems', 'A-Z of Punk', 'Today's 10 Most Rockin' and 'Metal: 87-07'and 'overdrive'.

The channel is aired on SKY and Virgin Media. With an audience of predominantley 16-34 year olds.

KISS TV

Kiss is a music television channel. It was launched in 1998. It is aired on SKY and Virgin Media. It mainly consists of Hip-Hop, Trance, R & B and Pop.

The Channel is linked to sister channels such as:

Smash Hits
Heat
Magic
E4

They air no programmes as such, however they do air all of the latest and the most popular music videos and sometimes they have a host on the programme.