“Like other channels, but much louder”
This is the strapline for newly founded EDMTV: “the first global EDM Television Network”. You wonder why the idea hasn’t been broached before. A modern phenomenon, responsible for a multitude of sub cultures - gloving, caking, PLUR - it was only a matter of time before television laid claim on EDM.
One of EDMTV’s presenters, Johny Pach, claims that EDMTV is “tipped to be bigger than MTV in its first year”. A hyperbolic claim from a man whose previous endeavours have included running his own media channel ‘Pach Tag’ and appearing in adverts for Bid TV and Flora butter.
Pach seems to be a kind of Ollie Murs everyman, a hard worker with no musical credentials who has been put at the helm of one of EDMTV’s scripted shows ‘The Spin’. It's an uneducated choice from a channels whose own aims seem foggy at best.
Presenter Johny Pach
The channel supposedly opened on American service provider DirectTV on March 14th, though its undermanned Twitter page (10 tweets, 74 followers) has given no indication of availability aside from a live stream on an equally faulty website. Vague support has been drummed up via a reel of musicians suggesting that we’re watching EDMTV, but they look just as confused as the rest of us.
It’s a bizarre enterprise: EDMTV talks big talk but has so far failed to deliver on anything, relying on a random non-TV personality and enough scathing press coverage to drive website traffic. Its founder, a certain Matt Bolton, has said that he wants the channel to focus on “the people, the places, the deals, the real stories that are alive”.
Will it be looking to cover the bankruptcy of SFX, or the subsequent cancellation of TomorrowWorld? Will Johny Pach be chasing down a tell-all interview with Kygo, or looking to take on the new poster boy of the genre, Justin Bieber?
EDMTV may be the first of its kind, but it could be the last. EDM is about to transition, no longer the only genre that’s giving electronic music to an audience who were late on the uptake.
Unless it gets a crew of experts together to utilise the platform it's trying to carve out for itself, we wouldn’t predict a surge in Twitter followers just yet.
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