Kerrang! TV

Kerrang! TV is a digital television station owned by Box Television, which is loosely connected to the magazine, Kerrang!. As of 2005, all of its programme content is music videos, the majority of which is open scheduled, for text requests from their playlist.

The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal and pop-punk/skate punk, although with some unusual exceptions. Certain bands, such as Tenacious D and Limp Bizkit get higher than average play rates, due to higher rates of text requests. Themed 30 minute segments often cover artists who are on the playlist, with large numbers of videos, most noticeably Green Day, Paramore and You Me At Six. There are also some unusual plays, such as Beastie Boys, and The Bloodhound Gang. Rap artist Eminem has many of his videos played on Kerrang, which has caused controversy among long-time fans. This has also led to criticism of racism on the part of Kerrang; because black musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, despite being considered an historically vital rock musician, does not receive airplay, while white rappers such as Beastie Boys and Eminem do.

The station unusually guarantees to play a requested video, unlike others where a voting system is in place. However, it may take some time for the video to be played.

It shares much of the ethos of its namesake magazine, although it will not go as far as to play unsigned acts or veer too far off music which is accepted by the mainstream. Heavy metal is least played, as death metal and black metal are very rarely played, although extreme metal act Cradle of Filth have appeared on late night Kerrang! and even day-time Kerrang!TV from time to time. Indeed more mainstream rock acts are favoured. British and American music is most featured, however European music is, rarely; although Rammstein (Germany) have featured weekly. Gothic metal and power metal are rarely played.

Many of the videos shown are heavily censored to remove profanity, violence, and references to God and religion. The censorship usually takes the form of dubbing out the offending phrase or by blurring the picture.

Often, they will show video countdowns. Ones that have been shown are 'moshing anthems, 'A-Z of Punk', 'Today's 10 Most Rockin' and 'Metal: 87-07'and 'overdrive'.

The station has an annual video countdown called the Rock 100, which covers the 100 most requested videos on the station (Rock or otherwise) in the previous year, and with links between blocks of tracks given by one of the featured bands. In 2005, Good Charlotte presented the Rock 100 from a strip club in Manchester. In 2009, Charlie Simpson voice-overd the show with clips from people's vote in the Download festival.

It is part of subscription packages on all platforms, which include Sky, and Virgin Media. It is part of a boquet of channels owned by Box Television, which include 4Music, Smash Hits!, KISS, Q, The Box and Magic.

Debut

The first broadcast of Kerrang! TV had a countdown of voter's most desired videos. The most popular choice and the first video ever shown on Kerrang! TV was Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff and Everlast's Black Jesus were also in the first 3 videos ever played.

External links

• Kerrang! TV
• Kerrang! TV on Twitter
• Kerrang! TV on Facebook