New Music Channels For Sky

[KJ]

Pop Idol guru may become Sky pilot

John Cassy
Thursday September 26, 2002
The Guardian

BSkyB has held talks with Simon Fuller, the music guru behind the Pop Idol phenomenon, about ways to involve him in the launch of its three new music channels.

Rupert Murdoch, BSkyB's chairman, is likely to welcome Mr Fuller's involvement in one of the central areas of the broadcaster's new push into content creation, after witnessing American Idol, the US version of the series, achieve record ratings on his Fox Network. He attended the recent final of US Idol in Los Angeles and talks have subsequently taken place between Mr Fuller, his company 19TV and BSkyB executives.

It is unclear whether Mr Fuller will be offered a stake in the channels, which are due to be launched by Easter. They will be overseen by former Channel 5 boss Dawn Airey, who is to join BSkyB in the new year.

The satellite broadcaster wants to harness Mr Fuller's expertise in developing audience-grabbing pop programming and events as it prepares to introduce channels that will compete with MTV and Emap's Kerrang, Q and The Box.

It is thought that Capital Radio and Ministry of Sound have also held talks about becoming involved in the channels, although BSkyB wants to retain as much control over ownership and content creation as possible.

Mr Fuller is seen as one of the most forward-thinking talents in music television and earned an estimated £20m from American Idol alone. Aside from taking a large share of the £1m that rights to each episode of the show commanded, he made millions from phone voting and sponsorship deals with Ford and Coca-Cola.

The final of American Idol attracted more than 20m viewers. The viewer participation that his shows encourage is ideally suited to interactive digital television which enables subscribers to vote from their remote controls.

A BSKyB spokesman declined to comment directly about Mr Fuller but said: "We continue to talk to a wide range of people across all areas of the music industry and no deals have yet been struck."

[KJ]

Sky threatens to slash MTV cash

Owen Gibson
Monday September 30, 2002

Legendary music broadcaster MTV is facing a cash crunch next Easter when BSkyB will attempt to dramatically reduce the amount it pays the broadcaster, as well as launching its own rival music channels.

BSkyB currently pays MTV around £20m a year for six channels, including VH1 and MTV Base, and the company is expected to try to reduce the fees by half.

The number of music channels has exploded in recent years, with six MTV channels and six Emap channels including Smash Hits, The Box, Q TV and Kiss.

And those in the industry say it was significant the BSkyB chief executive, Tony Ball, who is launching three new music channels, singled out the Emap channels for praise in Media Guardian last Monday.

"Just look at Emap's channels. They've only been on air a year or so and they've already got similar share to MTV. Brand loyalty is not huge in this space" he said.

One music industry executive said: "This was a warning shot across the bows of MTV. I am sure Sky are trying to slash the amount of money they pay to them."

When MTV did its deal with Sky five years' ago there was a fraction of the choice now available to the teenage market.

The number of new entrants has undermined the strength of MTV, the once invincible music service that singlehandedly defined the genre when it launched in the 1980s.

Sky may look to reduce the amount it pays MTV by as much as half, while at the same time launching its own channels against it. It already sells advertising on behalf of the Emap music channels.

Last year Telewest threatened to drop MTV channels from its cable service altogether if it did not lower the amount it charged. MTV was eventually forced to slash its charges from 70p to 40p per subscriber

[Anorak]

We give MTV a lot of stick, but is there anybody who can watch all the other music channels on Sky. There is so much onscreen furniture it is next to impossible. Only Kerrang and P-Rock offer anything different anyway, but I wish P-Rock would do away with the scrolling at the bottom of the screen, otherwise I'd watch this channel a lot.

[Mike]

I saw an article in Broadcast magazine recently which claimed MTV were losing viewers but overall music Channels share of the market was up.

Anoraks point about "onscreen furniture" is a good one particularly on channels which shamelessly promote premium rate request lines such as Smash Hits

Of course MTV have moved away from their original format with some of their non-music programming

[The Doc]

There's now so many music channels and there's nothing on!