Get the latest gossip
TV channels once championed music. Why have they given up so completely?
Channel 4 has axed music video channels like The Box and Kerrang! amid falling revenues. They were once vibrant and full of discoveries – and there’s very little to replace them
After the success of rock and metal channel Kerrang!, Sky launched its own imitator, Scuzz, in April 2003: the sweaty video for Funeral for a Friend’s This Year’s Most Open Heartbreak jump-started an era of bounty for the stay-at-home pop-rock fan. That year the visionary music entrepreneur Darren Platt founded Channel U, which transmitted grime into living rooms across the UK and broke the mainstream hegemony: Tinchy Stryder, Dizzee Rascal, Chipmunk (now Chip), Skepta and Ghetts all received crucial TV airplay, as the luxurious white-letterboxed videos of 2000s US hip-hop were replaced by footage from Peckham and Bethnal Green. In the 2020s, linear music TV is a dispiriting experience: a carve-up between Jools Holland, BBC Four’s Friday night archive Top of the Pops programme and Sky Arts’ bewildering clash of Andrea Bocelli arena shows and boomer-friendly reunion rock.
Or read this on The Guardian