Videomusic

Videomusic
Launched	April 2, 1984
Closed	June 1, 1996
Country	Italy
Language	Italian

Videomusic was an Italian music channel and one of the first music channels in Europe. It was founded by Marialina Marcucci and Pier Luigi Stefani (VM's Managing Director) in early 1984. The channel used to be broadcast from a location called "Il Ciocco", near the Castelvecchio Pascoli, Frazione of Barga in the province of Lucca (Tuscany). It was developed by spreading its terrestrial signal to most of the Italian regions. Its brand became very popular among young people.

In 1988, its owners bought 90% of pan-European TV channel Super Channel, while the remaining 10% was taken over by Virgin. Between 1989 and 1990, Videomusic also produced some English language music shows for Super Channel. Most of these shows were produced in Italy and were considered amateurish by European viewers who were used to watching high-quality music shows from Music Box, a separate company which also broadcast on Super Channel until the end of 1989.

In September 1993, the Marcucci family sold Super Channel to the US's NBC, which rebranded it as NBC Super Channel.

In 1992, the logo and graphic set of Videomusic were changed to a new one.

In 1995, Videomusic was sold to Vittorio Cecchi Gori, the owner of an Italian channel known as Telemontecarlo. Later in 1996, Videomusic was rebranded as TMC2 (Tele Monte Carlo 2) and its schedules included sports, news and movies. However, the channel also retained music as its most important content and also retained use of the Videomusic logo during music programmes.

In 1997, the Videomusic logo disappeared, but music programmes were increased again. The intention of rebranding the channel again as Videomusic failed because Cecchi Gori sold it to Telecom Italia Media, the former co-owner of MTV Italy, which was later closed down forever in favour of a terrestrial retransmission of MTV Italy. The Videomusic library is now owned by Viacom.

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