Channel 4

They don’t have to be music channels.

On the other hand though, maybe they feel being music channels is working for them?

Or maybe they only bought them to get full control of 4Music?

Couldn't they have just bought 4music on its own, or would that have been too complicated? Or Bauer stipulating they had to buy them all?

Operationally the channels will share a lot of resources - production facilities, playout, planning, management etc, to spin one off would presumably be fairly complicated, and they'd just end up with the name and epg slots

That’s really bizarre, just last week I was thinking they probably would do this because of music channels going under - imagining they can make it an entertainment focused channel now.

There was another music channel sale last month, with the sale of the former CSC music channels by Sony to Trace.

The fact that there has been 2 transactions involving music channels in less than a month shows that music channels aren't over quite yet (if there was no value or future left in them they would have probably been closed down rather than sold).

There's also a new music channel due to launch this month, Vintage Music (by View TV Group, who previously ran the Vintage TV online stream).

Hmmm. I don't think it's the best move.

They now have 11 channels under their belt - that’s the biggest catalogue of channels from a public service broadcaster, I think it could be a good move...

Well, I guess they have a plan ahead so we'll have to see what they do with them. Do we know if they'll remain as pay channels?

I don’t think they are pay channels, they’re all FTA with 4Music being FTV (due to a recent satellite deal with Globecast, encrypting 4Music as it’s a European-wide satellite) m

You can access the other music channels through 4Music's red button iirc