9X Music
9X Music is the name used in this listing for the British service of 9XM, the Indian Hindi music television channel owned by 9X Media. 9XM broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sky, and for a time on Freesat, in several separate periods between August 2008 and May 2013, showing Bollywood music videos and international music aimed at British Asian audiences. The channel finally closed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2013, following poor audience ratings.
9XM itself was launched in India in October 2007, based in Mumbai, and became known for playing full-length Bollywood songs interspersed with short humorous items presented by animated characters, rather than by conventional presenters. Its British history was turbulent, with launches, removals and relaunches that mirrored the financial difficulties of its original parent company.
The Indian channel
9XM is an Indian Hindi music television channel, broadcast from Mumbai and owned by 9X Media, an Indian television broadcaster owned by a consortium of private equity investors. Sister channels in the 9X Media portfolio have included 9XO, 9X Jhakaas, 9X Tashan and 9X Jalwa, alongside the general entertainment channel 9X. The music channel's programming focuses on Hindi-language music videos, principally the latest Bollywood songs.
What distinguished 9XM from rival music channels was its presentation. It is a playlist channel with no human presenters. Instead, animated characters appear between songs with jokes, anecdotes and showbiz items. The best-known are Bade and Chote, whose item is called Bakwaas Band Kar, alongside characters including Bheegi Billi, Badshah Bhai and the Betel Nuts. In 2010 the channel announced a move into licensing and merchandising based on those animated characters, and it later introduced a live streaming service, 9XM Live, on its website.
First UK launch in 2008
9XM launched in the United Kingdom in August 2008 as a free-to-air channel on Sky. Trade reporting recorded the launch date as 17 August, on Sky electronic programme guide slot 828. It was the second channel from INX Media to be available in the UK, following the Hindi general entertainment channel 9X. The founder and chief executive of INX Media presented the launch as bringing British viewers a place where young people could enjoy the best of Bollywood music and dance.
The following month, September 2008, the channel was added to Freesat, extending its free-to-air reach beyond Sky households. For British Asian viewers, 9XM added a dedicated, presenter-free Bollywood music service to a segment that already included channels such as B4U Music and Zee's music offering, soon to be rebranded as Zing.
Removal in 2009 and the hybrid experiment
The first British run ended in 2009, amid serious problems at the parent company. 9XM was removed from Freesat on 27 August 2009 and from Sky on 24 December 2009. Its Sky programme guide slot was purchased by Colors, the Hindi entertainment channel then expanding in Britain.
The background lay in India and in the wider INX business. In August 2009 the cash-strapped company closed its general entertainment channel 9X in the United Kingdom, where the channel ceased operations on 10 August 2009, and its remaining programmes were shifted to 9XM, making the British 9XM a hybrid music and entertainment channel for a time. That hybrid service was itself closed in early 2010. Trade reporting on the channel's later return attributed its troubled British history to the closure of its sister channel and to its parent company changing hands. In April 2010, Zee Entertainment Enterprises confirmed board approval in principle for the acquisition of 9X under a scheme of arrangement with 9X Media, a sign of how far the original INX venture had been restructured.
Return to Sky in 2012
After an absence of about two years, 9XM returned to the British market. It relaunched on Sky on 14 February 2012, free-to-air on channel 851, after its distributor World Media Connect finalised a deal and took responsibility for sales and marketing. The channel began official video testing ahead of the launch, with programme guide data tests appearing in the days before it went live.
The returning channel kept its original format of back-to-back music introduced by its animated characters, including Bade and Chote, Bheegi Billi and others. Its business head at 9X Media presented the relaunch as part of the company's growth plans, arguing that Bollywood music had fans across the globe. The British service was also expected to carry some local output, details of which were to be announced after launch. On its return it faced established competitors including B4U Music, Zing, Music India and Brit Asia TV.
Licence problems and final closure
The relaunched service lasted little more than a year, and not without interruption. On 12 October 2012 the channel closed once again, citing technical difficulties. It later emerged that its broadcast licence had been revoked by Ofcom, the British communications regulator, on 13 September 2012, following a failure to submit its returns. The channel nevertheless returned on 8 November 2012.
That return proved final and brief. 9XM closed in the United Kingdom for the last time on 31 May 2013, following poor audience ratings. Its three separate British lives, from 2008 to 2009, in hybrid form into early 2010, and from February 2012 to May 2013 with an interruption in the autumn of 2012, make its British history unusually fragmented for a channel backed by a major Indian music brand.
Programming and presentation
Throughout its British periods, the channel's content was fundamentally the Indian 9XM proposition adapted for the UK market: full-length videos of the latest Bollywood songs, presented as a continuous playlist. The animated interludes served the function that video jockeys performed on rival channels, linking songs, delivering humorous items and giving the channel a recognisable personality without presenter costs or schedules. Items associated with the format include the Bade and Chote sketches, Bheegi Billi and Bollywood-themed features.
The hybrid period of late 2009, when programmes from the closed 9X general entertainment channel were shifted onto 9XM in Britain, was the exception to that music-led pattern. Once relaunched in 2012, the channel returned to its initial format of back-to-back music with animated presentation. Reporting at the time noted that the animated characters would talk in a language relevant to the audience, reflecting the channel's Hindi-speaking target market in Britain.
British Asian music television context
9XM's British career illustrates both the demand for Bollywood music television in the United Kingdom and the difficulty of sustaining it. Demand was clear: multiple channels competed for the same British Asian audience, and a Sky programme guide slot vacated by 9XM in 2009 was immediately valuable enough for Colors to purchase. Supply was harder. A music channel depended on its parent company's finances in India, on British distribution deals, on regulatory compliance with Ofcom, and on ratings in a small but crowded segment. 9XM failed, at different moments, on each of those counts: parental financial trouble ended its first run, a revoked licence interrupted its second, and poor ratings ended it altogether.
Position within 9X Media
In India, by contrast, 9XM endured as the flagship of 9X Media's music portfolio, sitting alongside regional and themed music channels including the Punjabi service 9X Tashan, the Marathi service 9X Jhakaas, the retro Hindi service 9X Jalwa and the international music channel 9XO, launched in April 2012. The group's own descriptions have listed a dedicated British version, 9XM UK, available on the Sky Digital platform, among its offerings. The contrast between the channel's stability at home and its stop-start history in Britain underlines how differently the same brand could fare in a diaspora market.
Legacy
9X Music, as a British service, is remembered mainly for that fragmented history and for bringing 9XM's presenter-free, animation-led format to British screens. For a total of roughly three years spread across five calendar years, it gave British Asian viewers another route to the newest Bollywood songs, competing with B4U Music and Zing. Its closures, in 2009, 2010, 2012 and finally on 31 May 2013, chart the wider instability of the INX and 9X ventures in the period, from the closure of the 9X entertainment channel and a change of ownership in India to licence difficulties and weak ratings in Britain.
