Kerrang! TV

Background

The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal and pop punk/skate punk, although with some unusual exceptions. Certain acts 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, Panic! at the Disco, Paramore and You Me at Six.

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 and even daytime Kerrang! TV from time to time. More mainstream rock acts are favoured. British and American music is most featured, European music is played 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.

Video countdowns are often shown. Different ones that have been shown include '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 made a voice-over for the show with clips from people's votes in the Download festival.

The channel is available on many platforms including Sky, Smallworld Cable and Virgin Media. It is part of a network of channels owned by The Box Plus Network, which include 4Music, Smash Hits, Kiss, Heat, The Box and Magic. On 2 April 2013, all Box Television channels went free-to-air on satellite, apart from 4Music which went free-to-view. As a result, the channels were removed from the Sky EPG in Ireland. However, Kerrang! TV launched on Freesat on 15 April 2013, alongside three other Box Television channels.

Debut

The first broadcast of Kerrang! TV had a countdown of voters' 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.