Oooh, I’ll have to catch this.

The Hits had some *really* nice idents, so it’s a shame they’re gone. I hope 4Music’s live up to them.

“Why must it be, without exception, that their chosen presenters are fucking useless TOOLS? Zero chemistry, zero talent, constant stumbling over lines …”

Cheap. Buy-One-Get-One-Free, no doubt.

What makes it worse is that its part of the Channel 4 Brand. Channel four used to be THE channel for sharp, dangerous and, dare I say it, cutting-edge TV. Programmes which always seemed to go against the mainstream pesto-piss that other channels would show. Now? Well, generally, all they feel the need to feed the loyal viewer is a stream of weak tv soup. Anything even close to having some popularity is jumped on and squeezed dry of any worth at all.
Don’t get me wrong though, there are some gems. The I.T. crowd is one of the few solid shows on the telly at the moment … that, along with (RE-RUNS) of Father Ted.

> Decision to deal with censoring bad language by jarringly dropping out the entire music track instead of the just lyrics: bafflingly shit and incompetent.

It’s just the equivalent of the Big Brother bird sounds, that’s all. It’s either that or risk Amy Winehouse saying anything on a live broadcast, which ain’t gonna happen because they don’t want to get fined. Ch4 will only be fed the stereo sound mix so it’s not like they can just cut the vocal channel.

> It’s just the equivalent of the Big Brother bird sounds

Apart from the fact that this is MUSIC and dropping the whole track to cover words is horribly jarring and clunky. Surely they can isolate the mics and just censor those so there’s not a great whacking SILENCE every time someone says “bum”?

Is the TV coverage likely to have all the separate tracks available? I’d have thought the levels were balanced on-site and the channel then just got that stereo output…

…but maybe I’m wrong.

The only way they could cut the vocals would be if the TV production team had the invidual channel outputs from the main live desk running into individual channels on their own mixer. That would require so much pissing about that it’s simply not worth it. The stereo mix all the way.

Ok, point taken, but it’s still jarring, no matter what technical limitations they might have. Why can’t they be reckless like the BBC and just go ahead and broadcast all the fucks they want over teatime?

It’s only a few months ago that they aired an apology for the strong language during Live Earth!

Well, I’m staying at my Sky-less parents for a few days and the only music channels they have are TMF and 4Music.

I don’t want live performances, I don’t want Shipwrecked repeats, I just want non-stop music videos.

It’s not quite as bad as MTV (some, um, music would be nice) but it’s still a rather pointless move into E4 territory.

> I don’t want live performances, I don’t want Shipwrecked repeats, I just want non-stop music videos.

I’m having the same problem with it. Old Friday Night Projects?!