[WillPS]

In fairness, Magic, Kiss and Kerrang live on through their respective radio stations, as well as the latter having its magazine. 4Music, in my opinion, never really had all that much brand power. Considering its heritage, I'd say The Box was the biggest loss out of this mass exodus.

I think there'd be more nostalgia for 4music if they stuck it out with music. As it was they gradually transitioned over a space of 5ish years from being mostly music and videos to being mostly entertainment with a small amount of videos at breakfast time. Then that was 4music for the best part of a decade. Then that became E4 Extra.

When I told people that the music video channels going, and listed 4music among them most were surprised it was still going, yet they knew somehow that The Box, Kerrang, Magic and Kiss were still there. One even said "oh I thought that's now called E4 plus or something" - and the thing is they're absolutely right, it is!

In some ways it's totally baffling they retained the 4music brand at all, as without it they'd have had a neater degree of separation and Box Plus could have been wound up or spun off without any impact on the core '4 brand'. My only theory is that either one or both of the following is true:
> They wanted to keep both non-licensed brands active so they had a choice to use for the licensed channels when the post-Bauer rebrand which never came happened
> Box Plus wanted to keep that link to the mothership brand internally, so that it would perhaps be less easy for a C4 exec to press the 'close' button (in vein, it would turn out)

I agree with others that The Box is now a good surplus asset which it'd be criminal if C4 didn't capitalise somehow.