History
The channel was brought to the United Kingdom by Vincent Monsey (of Radio Caroline fame) and his partner Liz Laskowski, who discovered the channel in Miami in 1991 as The Jukebox Network. The UK company, Video Jukebox Network International Limited, was formed in 1991 and the channel was launched in April 1992 as The Box in the early days of cable television, carried by four operators United Artists, Telewest in London and Bristol, Nynex in the south of England, and Videotron which is also based in London.
Over the next few years, The Box "rolled out" on a regional basis across the United Kingdom on every cable system available, and eventually onto Sky Digital in 1998. The Box was also broadcast on the Astra Satellite between 2am and 7am during the downtime of Granada Plus and Men & Motors. From 1999, all the regional versions of The Box were shut down and replaced with this version.
Ticketmaster Inc. briefly owned 50% of the company (Box Television Ltd) before becoming a public company on the FTSE. EMAP took ownership of these shares in 1997, and purchased the shareholding held by the American company VJN Inc. which had then become TCI Music and then Liberty Digital. The US version of the channel was sold to MTVN in 2000. EMAP retained ownership, receiving profits made from music video selections, which are made by the viewers using premium rate phone lines, as well as the small fees from BSkyB for being an encrypted channel. Each week a new playlist is released, and this will generally contain new or current music videos. The playlist was published on Teletext and the channel's website. Now the playlist is programmed in the 'Up Next' section on screen.
Read more about this topic: The Box (UK And Ireland)
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