Launch and early years The Box was brought to the United Kingdom by Vincent Monsey and his partner Liz Laskowski, who discovered the original American music video channel in
Miami in 1991, when it was then known as
The Jukebox Network. The UK company, Video Jukebox Network International Limited, was formed in 1991 and
The Box was launched the following year in April 1992. The Box was initially carried by four operators
UA,
Telewest in
London and
Bristol, Nynex in the south of England, and Videotron, which was also based in London, and over the next few years, The Box started to launch on a regional basis across all of the United Kingdom's cable system and eventually onto
Sky Digital in 1998. The Box was also broadcast on the
Astra Satellite between 2:00 am and 6:00 am during the downtime of
Granada Plus and
Men & Motors. From 1999, all the regional versions of The Box were shut down and replaced with a single UK version.
Ticketmaster Inc. briefly owned 50% of the company (
Box Television Ltd) before becoming a public company on the
FTSE.
EMAP took ownership of these shares in 1997, and purchased the shareholding held by the US company VJN Inc, which had then become TCI Music and then Liberty Digital. The US version of the channel was sold to
MTV Networks in 2000, and was rebranded as
MTV2 sometime afterwards, with EMAP retaining ownership.
Channel 4 acquisition In July 2007,
Channel Four Television Corporation acquired 50% of Box Television, before EMAP's remaining 50% in the company was sold to
Bauer Media Group in January 2008. In 2019, Channel 4 took full ownership of the company, now known as The Box Plus Network. On 2 April 2013, all Box Television channels went
free-to-air on satellite, except for
4Music which went
free-to-view. As a result, the channels were removed from the Sky EPG in Ireland. The Box was added to the
Freesat EPG on 15 April 2013, alongside three other Box Television channels. The Box and its sister channels (except 4Music) returned to Freesat on 8 December 2021 alongside C4 HD. Each year on 1 November, the channel temporary rebranded as "BoXmas", playing Christmas hits. It also played regular hits during post-Christmas days. On the evening of 25 September 2021, transmission of channels operated by Channel 4 was impacted by the activation of a fire suppressant system at the premises of
Red Bee Media. This resulted in The Box being simulcast on Freeview in the place of
4Music, and the channel being broadcast in the place of 4Music,
Kerrang! TV and
Magic on satellite and cable.
Closure On 29 January 2024, Channel 4 announced it would be shutting down several of its smaller and declining channels which no longer delivered revenue and public value, including The Box. The channel's schedule for June 2024 hinted at a closure date of 30 June, as it featured several video blocks referring to the channel in the past tense, including a reuse of the channel's original logo and slogan, with its original slogan slightly alted to "Music Television You Controled". At 23:59 on 30 June 2024, The Box closed, with its final music video being "
Goodbye" by the
Spice Girls. It then played the shutdown promo before cutting to a screen saying "This service has now closed", as with its sister channels. ==Format==