The Box

My parents decided to get Sky digital and I was pretty glad because I had heard there were many music channels to suit everyone’s taste. I noticed the box, their tagline was ‘music television you control’ and I thought that sounds really good, because you just phone in and vote for the song you want to hear and they do have quite a selection, which is really good. All you do is remember the three digit number of the song you want to hear, then phone a special phone number and request the song using the number, easy.

The channel is on 24/7 and has no presenters but does air a lot of advertisements.

I had remembered a while back though, I saw the box on a channel in the middle of the night, I think it was men and motors. They put the box on as a filler as they may have not had anything else to put on. I do remember calling them up to put a song on, it was 6 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep and I did feel like seeing a certain music video, but nothing happened. I waited for ages but my song didn’t come on so I decided to phone again and again but nothing. It was strange but then I realised it cost 50p per call. I felt like a real idiot because I must have spent £2.00 on absolutely nothing. I thought they charged too much but was their way of making a profit as nothing comes for free. I even saw that they are now charging 60p instead of 50p, which is really steep for a song request. I really do think it is a rip off.

When I saw the box that time I remember the screen being sort of fuzzy and I couldn’t really see the screen very well but that has changed and it very clear now.
Their tagline even changed to ‘smash hits you control’ which was a bit strange. I think it is from the magazine.

Most of the songs in the play list are top 40 songs and sometimes the odd song you haven’t really heard of. I know for a fact that I heard so solid crew on the box first before MTV. That was pretty cool. The box does play a lot of songs before MTV, which I noticed, and they don’t really make a big fuss out of it like MTV do.

I do enjoy watching the box but have noticed from time to time they will play the same songs over and over, which can get very irritating. It’s a good music channel but need to add more tracks. There selection on their tele text isn’t very big so if they added more songs it would definitely improve the channel.

I think people who enjoy top 40 music would adore this channel, but for people into indie, rock and r’n’b this isn’t very appropriate. Most songs in the chart are played which can be a good and bad thing.

The box also does contests but I think they are a rip off as they do not really announce the winners and the cost of the call is quite expensive.

The box also has their own chart from the amount of requests a song has received. Sometimes the song that is at number one will also go to number one in the official music charts and they do make a big deal out of this.

One thing I do enjoy about the box is box talk where they talk to pop stars who are releasing their first songs are more established artists, and it can be fun.

I do like the box but think it is more for teenagers than anyone else. It has music mostly in the charts and doesn’t really have older songs. I think the channel could be improved if they had a wider variety.