Music Channels

According to Digiguide, it looks like the rebrand of the Vault will take place at 2am on 1st November, with Chart Show TV and Chart Show Hits rebranding at 3am, with "no listings available" after these times.

Normally, listings for after this point would be available (Christmas Starz currently has listings on Digiguide up to 9th November), so it looks like they're holding back on releasing listings for the new channels.

2am and 3am seems a slightly odd time for the rebrands to occur, or maybe that's the intention, i.e. to rebrand them during the graveyard slot when viewing figures will be low. Alternatively, I'm guessing the rebrands might occur later on in the day (e.g. 6am) with the period in between filled with music videos with minimal or no channel branding (can't really see them completely closing down in between).

I wouldn't read too much in to the DigiGuide listings. Channels often have listings that end in the middle of the night once you reach the end of the current schedules.

Turns out the return of Christmas Starz to Freesat was as a replacement for the Vault (which is no longer on Freesat), rather than as an extra channel.

One explanation for this could be that the Vault (together with the Chart Show branded channels) will be becoming a subscription channel when it rebrands, to bring it in line with Trace channels in other countries, which would explain its removal from Freesat.

Listings for Trace Vault have just appeared on DigiGuide and show it launches at 06:00 on 1st Nov.

Sabrina departs, but Kenan & Kel and Sister Sister remain, and Clueless, Clarissa Explains it All and Moesha join the line up,

It looks like trailers for the new channels are running now - I just caught the end (literally the last 2 seconds) of the Trace Latina trail on The Vault and then saw one for Trace Vault on Chart Show Hits about 2 mins later... looks good from what I saw...

Also some idea of what the graphics might look like as the trailer has the channel logo animated in the top left corner

https://www.skymedia.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Trace-Launch-One-Pager-2019-Online.pdf

I give these channels two years max.

The only channel I can see lasting is Trace Vault, as it's not that different from the Vault.

I can't see Trace Latina lasting that long, as I don't think there's enough of an appetite for a dedicated latin music channel in UK to make it commercially viable.

Not sure about Trace Urban either, given the previous rebrand of Total Urban to Total Country. The fact that Total Country has lasted, and hasn't reverted back to Total Urban means it must be more successful as a country music channel.

To be fair, I'm suprised there's that much demand for a country music channel in the UK, but clearly there must be.

Total Country has only been going less than a year so will reserve judgement. Its owners are Universal Music Group so they have very deep pockets. And presumably there are added benefits for a record label owning a music channel.

The benefits can't be that good, otherwise Sony (which also owns records labels) wouldn't have sold their music channels, although I realise that they were operated by a separate division, Sony Pictures Television.

Launch promos for the 3 new channels: