# Palladia, CMT & VHL Soul to rebrand in 2016 per reports



## mws192 (Jun 17, 2010)

Several Viacom channels will rebrand shortly per a Comcast legal filing in the State of Connecticut.

Programmer Name Changes


Beginning December 28, 2015, "VH1 Soul" will be re-branded as "BET Soul." 
Beginning January 4, 2016 "CMT Pure Country" will be rebranded as "CMT Music." 
Beginning February 1, 2016 "Palladia" will be re branded as "MTV Live."

http://www.dpuc.state.ct.us/DPUCUndocketed.nsf/88f12116235902e185256a860056babb/85256a63004def9685257f23006bd58d?OpenDocument

Also http://www.bet.com/news/music/2015/12/28/vh1-soul-to-become-bet-soul.html


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I remember when CMT was Music ...


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## RunnerFL (Jan 5, 2006)

James Long said:


> I remember when CMT was Music ...


You can pretty much say the same thing about any channel out there now....

I remember when MTV was music...
I remember when History was History...
I remember when Syfy was SciFi...
I remember when AMC was American Movie Classics...

And so on...


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## SeaBeagle (May 7, 2006)

For some strange reason these channels must not want viewers. 


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SeaBeagle said:


> For some strange reason these channels must not want viewers.


Except for that small part where AMC is getting better numbers than they ever got during their American Movie Classic days and has one of the highest rated shows on cable...

And MTV is getting higher ratings with their reality shows and original series than they ever got when they showed mostly music videos. Times have changed, if their target audience wants to see a music video they can just go on VEVO or YouTube and see it instantly, they don't need to watch MTV, VH1, CMT or MuchMusic USA for several hours and hope their favorite video plays, or if they were lucky enough to have The Box in the 90s, dial a 900 number and get the video you want to watch in the queue for your area.

Viacom still has channels that are 24/7 music videos, it's just that Dish and DirecTV don't carry them so many people here haven't seen them unless they also had Digital Cable:
BET Jams (the former MTV Jams) - Hip-Hop music videos 24/7
BET Soul (the former VH1 Soul) - R&B music videos 24/7
CMT Pure Country (the former VH1 Country, soon to be CMT Music) - Country music videos 24/7
MTV Hits - Pop music videos 24/7
mtvU - College/Indie Rock music videos 24/7

For those who don't know, Palladia is basically the US equivelent of the international MTV Live HD channels. A channel composed of live concerts, festivals and music videos. (It's not in the schedule, but in addition to the Epic.Awesome.Videos block in the morning, Palladia also has a block of music videos as filler between shows)


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

They're all trying find a way to make money beyond the fees they soak us all for.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

KyL416 said:


> Times have changed, if their target audience wants to see a music video they can just go on VEVO or YouTube and see it instantly, they don't need to watch MTV, VH1, CMT or MuchMusic USA for several hours and hope their favorite video plays ...


MTV walked away from music videos long before there was competition.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

James Long said:


> MTV walked away from music videos long before there was competition.


Not really, by then they had MTV2 which remained all music videos well into the 00s, even after it merged with The Box at the start of 2001. MTV2 didn't start drifting away from music until late 2004, and by then their 24/7 music video channels were around for several years and had widespread carriage on digital cable. MTV also still had a lot of music video blocks during the daytime and afternoon well into the mid-00s, as opposed to today where it's limited to a few hours in the morning and overnight.

In the pre-VEVO and YouTube days they also had most of their music video library on their old MTV Overdrive website and then the MTV Music website until VEVO launched and forced them to remove most of the music videos. (They have since returned to their site via VEVO's embedded API). There were also several other pre-VEVO music videos sites in the early 00s like Launch and Yahoo Music.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

KyL416 said:


> ...For those who don't know, Palladia is ...


And there is the reason why they feel they need a rebrand. Go on the street and ask 10 people what Palladia is all about, and probably 10 people will say "I have no idea what you are talking about". Few have even ever heard of these channels, let alone watch them. VH1 Soul? WTF even _is_ that?

All television is about how much choice there is; about what to watch, and when. The linear model tried to expand that choice by giving us 300 channels instead of 3 channels. But that is a poor attempt at making choosing what to watch easier or more convenient. The DVR tried to expand on that by giving us the power to time-shift. That worked pretty good.

But you only need one channel, actually, (if you can program it yourself) and the only time anyone is interested in watching a show is "now", so schedules of multiple channels and channel grids are a relic of the past. The handwriting has been on the wall for a couple of decades that VOD would be the future of media consumption, and with streaming, that is finally becoming a reality. The reality.

And that is where we are headed, and you can rebrand your unwatched minor channel all day long, and it won't change that metric. The shelf-life of linear TV channels can't be extended by rebranding, anymore than changing the name of the buggy whip or the electric typewriter would bring them back to the marketplace. These guys are essentially re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. If Viacom truly wants to remain viable, diversify into streaming, and let Palladia and the rest die a natural death.


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## SeaBeagle (May 7, 2006)

The biggest problem is there are too many channels out there without anything worth looking at. 


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

Please.

There are a lot of channels with nothing good on them. Of course. But if you don't watch them, how is that a problem at all, let alone "the biggest" problem? Who would even care? That's only a problem for the people running the channels we don't watch.

We don't need them to have anything good on them (even if providers are forced to bundle them and we are forced to pay for them) because there are lots of channels and streaming services with plenty of great stuff to watch. I would prefer to be thankful for that rather than spend time lamenting how awful a minor channel like Palladia might be (and if you like that content, it's actually pretty good).

If you like TV, you are probably not going to be disappointed in a paucity of choice, regardless of how much drek accompanies the gems. If you want fresh peas, you have to pick the pods along with them. Thats the new normal. For now.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

> Beginning February 1, 2016 "Palladia" will be re branded as "MTV Live."


So, no more concerts and specials.

More BB reruns and commercials.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SayWhat? said:


> So, no more concerts and specials.


It's still going to have the same mix of concerts, festivals, live performances, music videos, and specials. MTV Live HD is just the name they've been using for that channel internationally.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

KyL416 said:


> It's still going to have the same mix of concerts, festivals, live performances, music videos, and specials. MTV Live HD is just the name they've been using for that channel internationally.


And AMC still runs classic movies with no commercial breaks.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

SayWhat? said:


> And AMC still runs classic movies with no commercial breaks.


AMC's format from the 90s has NOTHING to do with the current rebrandings Viacom is doing with their music channels to unify their branding... (i.e. placing the hip-hop and R&B channels under BET, giving Palladia the brand they use around the world for MTV's concert/festival channel.)

There's a reason why Palladia has a block of music videos as filler at the end of shows instead of ads, heck there's a reason why there's enough time at the end of the shows to air a block of music videos. These are all digital cable channels with low subscriber counts, everything except Palladia is digital cable only and not on satellite, some of which are only available on the higher digital plus tier. In Palladia's case it's also HD only, to the point where Viacom lets providers put it in a seperate HD addon tier. There is no money in changing their formats since most of these don't have enough subscribers to get Nielsen rated to even set ad rates. Heck if Viacom has a new show that can get the ratings of their other hit shows, they would put it on their main channels that are also available on analog cable so they can sell ads for it, not on channels that aren't available on satellite or are HD only so they would already be down about 40 million potential homes compared to their other digital cable channels like Centric, Nicktoons, Logo or TeenNick.

The "American Movie Classics" rebrand to AMC was different, it was in an era where unless you were really lucky and were one of the first areas to get digital cable, you only had about 70 channels on analog cable. Its then parent company Cablevision/Rainbow media had Romance Classics (now WE), Bravo (since been sold to NBCU), MuchMusic USA (Now Fuse and has since been sold), IFC, cable only regional News 12 and Metro channels, and a bunch of RSNs. AMC was its most widespread channel, Romance Classics and IFC had little penetration and were still premium channels on their parent company's systems, Bravo was on the verge of being sold, while MuchMusic USA was still a partnership with the Canadian MuchMusic. It also didn't help that they lost several major studios to TCM and FXM.


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## TomCat (Aug 31, 2002)

Hmmm.

I think it actually is a satellite channel. I got roped into subscribing at one point, and I have DirecTV, so I think that makes it a satellite channel, by definition. Probably a lot more viewers on sat than on cable, where it might not even be carried much.

That AMC argument? Probably beside the point.

If you have separate names (or 'seperate', as you say) for your platform in different parts of the world, maybe it makes sense to rebrand to the same name. After all, once the inevitable happens and it morphs into an internet streaming channel, and is no longer either a sat or cable channel, which is the way I predict this to go, that would tend to minimize the confusion.


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## ejbvt (Aug 14, 2011)

There are a lot of music videos on Revolt, ch 384. Urban/hip-hop.


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## mws192 (Jun 17, 2010)

VH1 Classic is being rebranded as MTV Classic on August 1st, per a Comcast legal filing in the state of CT.
http://www.dpuc.state.ct.us/DPUCUndocketed.nsf/88f12116235902e185256a860056babb/85256a63004def9685257fee00691fab?OpenDocument

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