Music Channels - Research

As with the magazine industry the tv music channel industry is an oligopoly mostly dominated by 3 main companies; MTV Networks Europe, Box Television (Bauer Group/Channel Four Television Corporation) and the CSC Media Group. These companies own 9/7/7 music channels respectively consisting of 79% of the UK's music channels.

The first music TV channel to air was MTV (Music Television) in America, 1981 and ironically made 'TV Killed the Radio Star' the first music video aired on TV. A UK version was later launched in 1997.

MTV has had a significant impact on the music industry and popular culture and now, as the number of songs and music videos increased, has a number of sister channels devoted to variations of MTV and different genres of music. These include:

MTV

MTV+1

MTVN HD

MTV Base

MTV Hits

MTV Dance

MTV Hits

MTV Two

MTV Shows (MTV Music)

MTV Trax

MTV even introduced its own music award show with which bands could become even more famous as they compete for top spots. There is also now an online site for MTV where users can look up the latest music news and sign up for competitions.