New TV specialty is serious about music
TORONTO — Launched in October as a place for “serious music fans”, the retro-focused Vintage TV Canada specialty channel is aimed at not only older music lovers but anyone who’s hungry for music information and good solid music, says Canadian radio veteran Alan Cross, the channel’s creative director.
In contrast to other music channels where celebrities and lifestyle programming figure prominently and music now takes a back seat, Vintage TV Canada is focused on artists making serious music (its logo is a guitar pick), Cross said last week in an interview with Cartt.ca. We originally reported on Vintage TV Canada’s launch back in October.
“We’re going to provide pure music programming for the mature audience, for an older audience, completely Kardashian-free,” Cross (pictured) said.
Cross explained that the original Vintage TV channel launched six years ago in the UK was aimed at people over the age of 50, but over time the channel’s audience grew to include younger people looking for serious music television. Vintage TV Canada is seeing the same trend, Cross said.
“Now when we go out to our advertisers, we say that the demographic of the station is 14 to 84. Most are still over 35, but the area of growth is under the age of 35,” Cross said, adding that although Vintage TV Canada will never chase after the millennial audience, “if they want to come and discuss music with us on that level, we’re more than willing to bring them into the tent.”
With genre exclusivity now a thing of the past, Vintage TV Canada has launched at a time when competitor Bell Media is reducing its music channel properties, having shut down M3 (formerly MuchMoreMusic) and converted M3’s licence to launch the new Gusto TV food and lifestyle channel. In addition, Bell sold four smaller music specialties — Much Vibe, Much Loud and Juicebox and Much Retro — to Stingray, which rebranded the commercial-free music video channels and announced a distribution agreement with Shaw in October.
When asked how Vintage TV Canada will compete against Bell Media’s streamlined Much brand, Stingray’s four-channel lineup and Blue Ant Media’s seven-year old AUX-TV, Cross responded: “We’re going to compete on quality, and the marketplace will determine whether or not we’ve got it right. That’s honestly the only answer I can give you. We’re going to give it a shot… and let’s see if Canadians bite.”
One hurdle to reaching a wider audience will be getting carriage on more BDUs. At this point, Shaw Communications is the only BDU offering Vintage TV Canada to subscribers on Shaw Cable and Shaw Direct. Cross said Vintage TV Canada is in discussions with other BDUs and is hopeful that it will be able to report good news on the channel distribution front in the first quarter of 2017.
“We will live or die by the advertising that we sell.” Alan Cross – Vintage TV
He explained that because Vintage TV Canada uses a traditional ad-based business model it basically gives the channel free to BDUs and doesn’t take a slice of subscriber revenue. “We will live or die by the advertising that we sell,” Cross said.
From a programming perspective, Vintage TV Canada is committed to creating original programs featuring both established and new Canadian artists, to augment the more than 500 hours of programming available through its content licensing agreement with Vintage TV UK. In anticipation of the launch of the channel in Canada, production crews spent time last year recording content with music artists and guest hosts in Vancouver and Toronto.
Some of this content, such as its My Vintage and Needle Time shows, has already been featured on Vintage TV Canada. Canadian artists will also be showcased in the channel’s Live With… and Future Vintage shows, Cross added.
My Vintage is a kind of “desert island disc” show where guests talk about their favourite records, he explained. In addition to Cross himself, some of the My Vintage guest hosts have included The Pursuit of Happiness lead singer 
Moe Berg, Spoons frontman Gordon Deppe and Universal Music Canada executive Ivar Hamilton. Needle Time includes in-depth interviews with music artists, while Live With… features studio sessions recorded with artists.
“Then we have what we call our ‘Future Vintage’, which are artists that have a maturity that appeal to the older crowd but aren’t necessarily 35. So we’ll have somebody like Lights or Royal Wood or some mature-sounding, serious singer-songwriter types come in and perform,” Cross said. “We sprinkle these programs along with curated video flows throughout the week.”
Cross pointed out that Vintage TV Canada features completely linear 24-hour music programming, without repeating large blocks of programmes, unlike some other channels.
“For example, if Sarah McLachlan puts out a record, who’s going to play it? If somebody like David Wilcox or Colin James puts out a record, who’s going to pay attention to it?” – Cross
“We’re in the process of ramping up more Canadian productions, because we do have Cancon levels that we have to hit in our first, second and third years, which we will,” he added. (In its first year of operation, Vintage TV Canada is required to run 15% Canadian content, which will then increase to 35% Cancon in its third year.)
The channel is currently building relationships with labels and publicists who handle heritage artists in Canada, the types of artists who now find it difficult to get airtime when they come out with a new album.
“For example, if Sarah McLachlan puts out a record, who’s going to play it? If somebody like David Wilcox or Colin James puts out a record, who’s going to pay attention to it? There’s no radio station that’s going to play this music. There’s no traditional video channel that’s going to play this music. They just might get a 30-second mention on Breakfast Television or something and that’ll be it. Our point is that these are still vital and important artists whose music deserves to be heard and we want to be the conduit for it,” said Cross.
