Flaunt (TV channel)


Flaunt was a British electronic dance music TV channel owned and operated by CSC Media Group. It played music videos from the dance, techno, trance, disco, eurodance, house & upbeat pop genres 24/7.

History

Flaunt launched alongside its sister channels The Amp and Scuzz at the same time when they were owned and run by Sky on 17 April 2003, all of which are now defunct. Flaunt was the second channel out of the trio to disappear as The Amp was closed down and replaced with a classic hits channel called Bliss in March 2006. Several years later Flaunt was also closed down and replaced with Dance Nation TV on 17 March 2010. In September 2005 The Amp, Scuzz and Flaunt were operated by CSC Media Group whilst Sky still retained full ownership however by December 2006 Sky sold the channels over to the CSC Media Group.
When Flaunt launched in 2003 the channel originally started out as a Pop and Dance channel from its launch during its first incarnation. The channel had a more female-oriented appeal for the first year of its existence. Its first logo was a pink logo and had grey and white graphics. The channel did one time used to air entertainment programming from Red Carpet Bitch with British TV Presenter Julian Bennett that focused on celebrity gossip. The Flaunt Chart Show which used to be a weekly chart countdown on the UK Top 20 pop singles which was also broadcast on the UK TV channel Five from 2003 until 2004. Flaunt also had first-time exclusive rights to air Popworld before Channel 4 aired it on their main channel which is a show made by Channel 4.
In October 2004 Flaunt had received a new logo, this time they adopted a blue theme with a circular graphics theme, it had a parrot mascot during this period where he appeared in many of its idents. The idents were produced by .
In July 2006, Flaunt relaunched as a gay oriented music channel, it focused mostly on the Gay icons like Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Cher and Cyndi Lauper. Around the time of the channel relaunch it coincided with Euro-pride as a celebration. the channel had also undergone a new logo along with song title graphics which was a banner with twinkling stars in the bottom left side of the screen in 4:3 safe area. The channel idents around this time consisted of mostly shirtless men at the gym and disco ball shadow. Flaunt also hosted a competition to find the Face of Flaunt to find the next TV presenter. However the winner only managed to host a few shows shortly before the channel was sold to the CSC Media Group in December 2006. Flaunt alongside its sister music channels were encrypted in NDS from its launch until December 2006 became free to air meaning that any satellite receiver along with being available on Sky, Freesat and broadcasting on the Eutelsat 28A communications satellite could view the channels for the first time all across parts of Europe. Around this time shortly after going free-to-air, Flaunt had axed its gay theming entirely around this period and reformatted itself towards dance music instead of focusing on the niche gay audience and prior to the reformat the channel previously had a dance music appeal prior before turning exclusively into an all-dance music channel before 2007 rebrand.
In March 2007, Flaunt received a major overhaul to its playlist, both the channel presentation were changed to match the new audience reach towards catering for the dance music market. Flaunt had gradually delved further into various different sub genres of dance music such as trance, techno, house, electronica, ambient and trip hop. However, around this period Flaunt did not change its presentation that much during this period however they did abandon the baby blue and pink glitter graphics along with disco ball logo in favour of a purple and blue logo and swish effect graphics. During this period Flaunt had gained quick popularity in the dance music scene playing a wide range of popular dance hits to dance classics and to lesser-known obscure songs. Flaunt also had special events in Ibiza in their Flaunt Sessions show hosted by singer/songwriter Chantal Matar. Superstar DJ's Ferry Corsten, Paul van Dyk and Tiesto presented Flaunt at Creamfields. Dance acts Infernal, September, Chicane and Freemasons were also guests at Flaunt Sessions where they presented their favourite dance songs and presented their own songs. DJ and radio host Pete Tong was also a guest to present several shows on the Flaunt during the WMC specials. Flaunt started to become highly respected within' the British dance music community throughout this era. The channel was mostly house and euro music oriented by playing artists from the likes of Freemasons, Axwell, Stonebridge, Solu Music, The Shapeshifters, Kate Ryan and Jessy De Smet.
In May 2008, Flaunt rebranded with yet another new look logo along with a new graphics set this time they adopted a retro type font with a white logo and the graphics presentation were graphic equalisers. This period Flaunt begun to experiment with more thematic shows and became more trance-oriented during the late nights by playing videos from the likes of Solarstone, iiO, The Thrillseekers, Armin van Buuren, Above & Beyond, Richard Durand, Filo & Peri, Paul Oakenfold, DT8 Project, Ferry Corsten and ATB.
On 6 May 2008, CSC Media Group launched a one-hour timeshift channel called Flaunt +1. It was available 24 hours a day on Sky 367. However, after nearly 4 weeks on air, Flaunt +1 was replaced with Pop Girl +1 on 4 June 2008.
However, after almost 7 years on air, Flaunt was closed down on 17 March 2010 and was replaced with Dance Nation TV.

Former programming

The problems started on Monday 18 February 2008, when the currently named "Flava" Ofcom Licence was renamed from its original name of Flaunt to Flava. This caused a major uproar about the fact that Flaunt, a 24/7 dance channel would be closed, in favour of Flava. This, however, turned out to be an error on Ofcom's part and they accidentally changed Flaunt, when they were meant to change the B4 one. But, on the following Monday, Ofcom corrected the problem by removing the B4 licence, keeping the newly renamed Flava licence and adding a new Flaunt licence.

Virgin Media removal

On 6 November 2007, Flaunt along with Bliss and Scuzz, were removed from Virgin Media's ex-NTL platform as a deal with Chart Show Channels could not be made to make the channels available to their ex-Telewest platform.