Life Is Loud And Very Repetitive (Kerrang TV)

Member Name: GodToldMeTo

Product:	Kerrang TV
Date:	02/04/02 (983 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: diverse

Disadvantages: repetitive, expensive

When the channel was launched all those months ago on Sky Digital, channel 454 it was nice to see the alternative crowd were being catered for, now I don’t dare tune in. If I do it’s either Wait And Bleed, Marilyn Manson’s pathetic Tainted Love cover or what seems like half an hour of totally pointless adverts that are completely wasted on the channel’s target audience. Do the disassociated teens of this country really care about Aquafresh toothpaste and Quilted Velvet toilet roll?

If you’re familiar with Kerrang! Magazine then you’ll already know about the music it covers. This being punk, metal and all its sub genres, nu, trash etc and I actually have to credit the channel with being quite diverse. They have songs from everyone from Ash to Slipknot to Green Day to System Of A Down.

The channel itself takes on the same principals as the magazine but the term alternative that it prides itself on readily becomes somewhat of a contradiction. The channel is supposedly there to provide a change to the pop and r ‘n’ b that dominates the British charts, but when rock music is becoming the music of choice for all those ten-year-old teenyboppers you see loitering outside Manchester’s Marks And Spenser’s you really have to laugh.

If they wanted to be really to be alternative then country and western is the way forward. Not that I’m complaining though, well only a little bit. The channel is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week due to the automated way it is ran. This being by the viewers.

The way videos are shown on Kerrang is by the audience phoning in (09067 533 433) and on their phone, typing the three-digit code that follows all the available tracks. These are shown both on screen and on Kerrang teletext page 150. Oh by the way, you have to pay to request a video. Kerrang charges 75 pence a minute and expect to be on the phone for 1 minute at the least. Once selected, videos can
take anything up to 4 hours to be played. Hardly worth it really, you could download the video from the Internet faster.

The channel is reasonable if you don’t mind watching the same song about ten times in one hour. But if you enjoy ‘alternative music’ then watch MTV2, it’s by far the better of the two and dedicates shows to specific fields of music and even shows live gigs.

Occasionally, Kerrang will take a video off their selection list and bring it back at a later date; I can’t wait for Nickelback's “How You Remind Me” to get stacked away in the Kerrang archives. Recently they’ve reinstated Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) by Green Day this can be pleasant with regards a change but within a week they’ll be so overplayed it will spoil the song. This is why I hardly watch the channel anymore and if I do, it’s only the odd ten minutes here and there.

After 10.30 you’ll be able to watch the ex-rated videos Kerrang couldn’t show during the day. Pretty much just Slipknot and Marilyn Manson and don’t expect anything too taboo, there aren’t any orgies or mass killings, which you would expect – or is that just me?

Don’t expect any truly underground music on Kerrang, no matter how much they pledge allegiance to music they are a business and want people to phone in. But if you just have ten minutes to kill, give it ago.

Summary: