Now 80s

Now 80s is a British music television channel, focusing exclusively on playing music from the 1980s. The channel launched in its current form on 27 December 2016, initially as a temporary pop-up rebrand of NOW Music, previously a contemporary pop channel; the 80s format was subsequently made permanent.

History

In October 2013, Greatest Hits TV was replaced with a channel based on the Now That's What I Call Music! compilation brand, marking the 30th anniversary year of the Now! series. The new channel played a mix of current/contemporary and classic pop hits, broadcasting strands such as Britain's Hit 40.

In the run-up to Christmas each year, NOW Music would flip to a Christmas music format under the name NOW Christmas, with the temporary suspension of the normal contemporary output (in 2012, Greatest Hits TV became "Christmas Hits TV").

Following the Christmas 2016 run of NOW Christmas, rather than return to the usual format as in prior years, NOW Music instead transitioned on 27 December to carry solely 1980s music, under the banner of "NOW 80s". It was initially thought this would be temporary, and that the previous NOW Music would resume in early 2017, but the success of the 1980s format saw this retained indefinitely. Following the success of Now 80s, sister channel Chilled TV was retooled as 1990s music station Chilled 90s from March 2017; this channel was then used for NOW Christmas in 2017 (allowing the Christmas format and the 80s station to run simultaneously), before fully relaunching as Now 90s from 27 December 2017.

From 26 November to 27 December 2018, Now 80s (or Now 90s, Clubland TV or Massive R&B) will rebrand temporarily as Now Christmas.

Freeview and cable

In November 2017, Now 80s and Now 90s (then broadcasting as Now Christmas) were added to the GMAN Freeview multiplex broadcasting to Greater Manchester. In June 2018 availability of Now 80s was extended to Freeview HD owners in more parts of the country by relocating to the Arqiva COM8 multiplex.^[1] Now 90s continues to broadcast to Manchester only.

In July 2018, around the same time as the UKTV network of channels was being removed from Virgin Media, the cable platform added Now 80s as a discrete channel adjacent to Clubland TV on the guide; for some time previously, Now 80s and other AATW channels had been available to Virgin TiVo boxes as internet-streamed services accessed behind the red button via Clubland.

References

External links

• All Around the World Productions website