An Interview with the CEO of Vintage-TV, Canada’s Newest Music Channel

Vintage-TV is a new all-music cable channel, finally got coast-to-coast coverage this month when Rogers added it to their lineup of channels, joining Shaw in the west as a partner. Get your cable from Bell, Cogeco or another provider? Hang tight. We’re working on that. (Full disclosure: I’m the Creative Director for Vintage-TV Canada.) Billboard has this interview with CEO David Pick.

Vintage TV, The U.K.’s all-music television channel, quietly came into Canada in October, launching on Shaw to 2.4 million homes, and last week was added to Rogers basic cable package in 2 million homes. “[Carriers] Bell and Telus are very close, but we’re not there yet,” Vintage TV Canada general manager Nathalia Browing told Billboard in an email.

Vintage TV’s founder and CEO David Pick was in Toronto recently meeting with members of the music industry and doing press for the channel. He sat down with Billboard to discuss how they became “the most prolific producer of music TV programming in the U.K,” their expansion into Canada and potentially China and when it will be time to come into the U.S.

Billboard: What was your background in the music business before launching Vintage TV in the U.K.?
David Pick: I have been involved in the music industry for several decades. I started life in the mid-70s with EMI when EMI was literally the music industry in many ways. I started as a lawyer and tmoved to managing the contracts department. I was looking after deals from the Beatles to the Stones to Queen to the first deal Kate Bush signed, Cliff Richard, you name it. Itreally was the center of the music world in those days.

I then became involved in other smaller record labels and in 1981set up a business affairs consultancy, representing artists, managers, independent record labels and music publishers. My largest music client was actually MCA, which of course, became Universal. I was negotiating all of their signings in the U.K. and at that time, my opposite number in L.A. was Bruce Resnikoff [UME’s current president and CEO].  I probably devised the first ever pre-recorded videocassette and licensing agreement for a company, which became Embassy Home Entertainment, part of Embassy Pictures.

Then I got involved in music marketing, so I helped a compilation album business spread from the U.K. throughout Europe, into the States and into the Far East. It was a company called Tellydisc and Tellyvideo.  And then I got involved in home shopping, not just music, but all forms of direct marketing. So that took us through to the Internet and then I had experience of selling off a screen, which became relevant to what I do now.

Read the whole article here.