RIP More Music Channels

Today I discovered that the music channels run by Channel 4 closed down at the start of July. The fact it's taken me that long to find out shows how little attention I pay to music channels these days. It's probably at least a decade since I watched one. It wasn't always that way.

In the mid-90s I was a teenager with no music channels at home. I went on holiday where the only English channel on the TV in the hotel room was MTV. Every waking moment I was in the hotel room for was spent watching MTV. The main appeal of course was the music videos, but there were also shows such as "Most Wanted" and "Beavis & Butt-Head" that were compulsory viewing for me.

When I got home I really wanted Sky so we could have MTV but of course it wasn't my decision, and the decision was always no. A few years later when the decision was mine I took out a Sky subscription. By this point there were several music channels to choose from. There was MTV2 for alternative music, MTV Base for urban music and MTV Extra for something extra I guess. We also had VH1 and it's sister channel VH1 Classic for the older records. Then we had The Box and Kiss, channels where you could phone up and request a song from the playlist.

Over time more channels got added such as MTV Dance. I spent hours and hours flicking through the music channels and it was a great way of keeping up to date with what was happening in popular music.

My Sky subscription came to an end when I moved into a rented property that didn't allow you to install a Satellite dish. I could however get cable TV but unfortunately the only music channel that came with it was MTV2. Then later on The Box got added to much relief. Then MTV2 got removed and MTV Hits and VH1 Classic got added. This felt more like it, 3 channels to choose from which weren't niche ones.

This however exposed the downside to the music channels, a limited playlist. The Box was a set playlist of current and yet to be released hits, MTV Hits was the hits and VH1 Classic started to become repetitive itself. 

I'd kept hold of my Sky box and moved to a property that had a satellite dish and was able to get a couple of music channels without a Sky subscription, Chart Show TV and P-Rock TV. Both were new to me, the former being current hits and the latter being a dedicated punk channel. More channels got added including Channel U which was exactly the sort of channel I'd been crying out for at the time and would mostly watch it.

I did end up subscribing to Sky again and getting all the music channels. There was a ridiculous number of channels by this point. I did find myself drawn to channels like Magic who would play some 90s classics I'd not heard since the 90s. After a while though I'd heard these 90s classics on these channels more than I heard them in the 90s. 

The problem with having so many music channels though was knowing which one to pick. I would generally flick through each channel until I found a song I liked. The knowledge of how much choice there was however meant I'd question whether there was a better song on another channel so I'd keep flicking and not really listen to much music.

In the end we'd reached the point where none of the new music took my interest and the older music you'd get on the music channels was records I'd heard thousands of times before and had got pretty sick of. That was never going to end well.