Two New Music Channels Set To Launch

Two media consortia are believed to be planning new cable and satellite music channels for the near future.

Granada is reported to be in discussion with a number of record companies regarding the launch of an MTV-style channel and BSkyB and Virgin are in talks over a join-venture of the same nature. The proposals are thought to be at an early stage and are part of the explosion in new channels which will be part of the digital broadcasting age.

Music channels especially seem to be creating a lot of interest at the moment, with the BBC planning a channel based on Radio 1 *BBC Release New Channel Details and Emap buying The Box *EMAP Buys Into Youth Market, a non-terrestrial music video station. This is partly due to the young audience which can be reached via this medium but also the small number of viewers current channels are attracting. As well as a report by the ITC on Tuesday *(see ITC Publishes TV Audience Shares) which showed that The Box and Country Music TV are currently taking only a 0.06% share of viewing each while MTV and VH-1 have around 0.2% each, a recent survey by EMS also revealed that MTV was losing viewers *Survey Shows Mixed Results For Satellite Channels. While these shares are around the norm for non-terrestrial TV, some media owners clearly see a potential for channels which would pull in more viewers or at least offer stiff competition.

BSkyB and Granada were unavailable for comment regarding the launches.

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