IPC Launches NME TV Channel
IPC Media is extending its NME magazine brand with the launch of a 24-hour TV channel.
The channel will debut on Friday sometime between 6am and 11am on Sky Digital 377, making it available to 8.6 million households, with content heavily based on the charts and the latest offerings from the UK’s indie and alternative music scenes.
The station, which has been made possible following a strategic partnership with CSC Media Group, will be used to show exclusive NME footage from gigs and events. However, Channel 4 will retain the rights to screen the NME Awards.
NME TV follows the launch of Nuts TV to Freeview in September (see Nuts To Launch Digital TV Channel). There are no immediate plans to move NME TV onto Freeview yet, but IPC has not ruled it out if more space on the platform becomes available.
Advertising sales on the channel will be handled by specialist TV airtime sales and sponsorship house, Dolphin TV. The channel will aim to have between five and six minutes of ads every hour.
Magazine and online advertisers will be able to extend their campaigns onto the channel. Proctor & Gamble and several mobile companies are believed to have bought slots.
The channel will be comprehensively cross-promoted with NME.com and the NME magazine, and the magazine’s journalists will be able to put breaking music news on the channel’s scroll bar. In future, the channel could set up its own music news programme.
New bands will also be able to contribute content directly to the channel, by participating in “taking over the air” specials and exclusive gigs.
Publishing director Paul Cheal said the channel would help expand the NME brand.
“Our target audience is promiscuous in the way they consume media, so we want to be able to deliver the brand in whatever format they prefer,” he said.
“Ideally, an NME reader can flick through the magazine during the day, visit the site in the afternoon, come home and watch NME TV, before going to an NME club to see an NME gig.”
Cheal added: “We are in this for the long haul and I can only see us getting bigger and better in the future.”
In recent years, NME‘s print circulation has fallen amidst a fairly depressed music mag market (see ABC Results Jan-Jun 2007: Q Magazine Tops Music Sector Despite 18% Year On Year Circulation Drop), from 76,792 in July to December 2005, to 68,151 for the first six months of this year. Meanwhile, NME.com recorded more than 1.6 million unique users for the site in June this year, according to ABCe.
IPC Media: 0870 4445000 www.ipcmedia.com