Men & Motors was a men's lifestyle television channel in the UK. It was the last remaining station operated by the former Granada Sky Broadcasting joint venture, set up by

Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV (TV network), ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire on weekdays only, as ABC Weekend TV, ...

(now part of

ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV (TV network), ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc ...

) and satellite broadcaster

British Sky Broadcasting Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting Limited (BSkyB)), trading as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television, broadband internet, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers a ...

in 1996. Men & Motors closed on 1 April 2010. In February 2021, One Media iP relaunched a Men & Motors channel via Kapang, a television app, fronted by

Shane Lynch Shane Eamon Mark Stephen Lynch (born 3 July 1976) is an Irish singer, best known as a member of Boyzone. He has also taken part in auto racing, participated in reality shows such as ''Celebrity Big Brother (British TV series), Celebrity Big Bro ...

and Torie Campbell.

History

Launch

From its launch, Men & Motors was only available with subscription television services and for its first two-year on air, it shared space with

Granada Plus Plus was a digital channel run by Granada Sky Broadcasting. It was launched on 1 October 1996 under the original name of Granada Plus, and during its availability it underwent successive rebrands as G Plus, G+ and then simply Plus. However, it ...

and was on air each night from 11pm until 2am. It was part of the original line-up (as a "primary channel") for

ITV Digital ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc, owners ...

, a

Digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV, DTT, or DTTB) is a technology for terrestrial television, in which television stations broadcast television content in a digital signal, digital format. Digital terrestrial television is a major technologica ...

service part-owned by Granada. This saw its broadcast hours expand and it came on air at the earlier time of 9pm, with motors content before 11 pm, and adult content thereafter. When ONdigital closed, Men & Motors left DTT, and was then available only via satellite and cable.

Presenters

Famous names who started at Men & Motors are split into two groups. On the more mature 'Men' side of the channel, presenters included Jordan (

Katie Price Katrina Amy Alexandra Alexis Price (''née'' Infield; born 22 May 1978) is an English media personality and model. She gained recognition in the late 1990s for her glamour modelling work, including on Page 3 of the tabloid newspaper ''The Su ...

Jo Guest Joanne Guest (born 22 February 1972) is an English former glamour model and media personality. Glamour career Born and raised in Chesterfield, north east Derbyshire, England, she grew up on Poplar Drive in Glapwell. She attended the former H ...

, Catherine McQueen, Mike Reid, Roy "Chubby" Brown,

Garry Bushell Garry Bushell (born 13 May 1955) is an English newspaper columnist, rock music journalist, television presenter, author, musician and political activist. Bushell also sings in the Cockney Oi! bands GBX and the Gonads. He managed the New York C ...

and

James Whale James Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theatre director and actor, who spent the greater part of his career in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood. He is best remembered for several horror films: ''Fra ...

. On the 'Motors' side names included

Gary Numan Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), known professionally as Gary Numan, is an English singer, songwriter and musician. He entered the music industry as frontman of the New wave music, new wave band Tubeway Army. After releasing two st ...

Vanilla Ice Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), known professionally as Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper, actor, and television host. Born in Dallas, raised in Miami, he was the first solo white rapper to achieve commercial success foll ...

Ginny Buckley Virginia Louise Buckley (born 1 April 1968 in Rochdale) is a British journalist, radio and television presenter. Early life Buckley was born and brought up in Rochdale, England, before moving to Australia at the age of 18. She started her car ...

Richard Hammond Richard Mark Hammond (born 19 December 1969) is an English journalist, television presenter, and author. He co-hosted the BBC Two motoring programme ''Top Gear (2002 TV series), Top Gear'' from 2002 until 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson and James Ma ...

John Inverdale John Ballantyne Inverdale (born 27 September 1957) is an English broadcaster who works for both the BBC and ITV. During his radio career, he has presented coverage of many major sporting events including the Olympic Games, Wimbledon, the Gran ...

, Foo Foo Lammar (in a section titled ''Hot Agony Aunt'') and Princess Tamara. The channel initially saw some growth, and Men and Motors became a minor household name until November 2004, when ITV acquired GSkyB and rebranded the ill-fated

Plus Plus or PLUS may refer to: Mathematics * Addition * +, the mathematical sign Music * Plus (band), a Japanese pop boy band Albums and EPs * ''+'' (Ed Sheeran album), (pronounced "plus"), 2011 * ''Plus'' (Astrud Gilberto and James Last album), ...

ITV3 ITV3 is a Television in the United Kingdom, British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. The channel was first launched on Monday 1 November 2004 at 9 pm, replacing Plus (British TV channel), Plus ...

Switch to free-to-air

Many years after the closure of ITV Digital, ITV (the company formed by the merger of

Carlton Television Carlton Television (now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV franchise holder for London and the surrounding counties from 9.25am every Monday to 5.15pm every Friday. The company is now managed with London Weekend Tele ...

and Granada) successfully bid for a slot on digital terrestrial (DTT) multiplex D. It was announced that Men & Motors would be launched on

Freeview Freeview may refer to: *Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia *Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), a ...

on 2 May 2005. To coincide with this launch, the channel was re-vamped, and its late night, risqué adult content was replaced by archive drama, comedy and documentaries. The channel also dropped its

Videoguard VideoGuard (sometimes referred to simply as ''NDS''), produced by NDS, is a digital encryption system for use with conditional access television broadcasting. It is used on digital satellite television systems – some of which are operated by ...

encryption on Sky Digital on 1 July 2005, switching to

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscri ...

status. ITV's plans to launch a channel aimed at men (the target audience of Men & Motors) were considered by many to be the end for Men & Motors. It seemed logical that Men & Motors would simply "become"

ITV4 ITV4 is a British free-to-air television channel which first aired on 1 November 2005. It is owned by ITV plc. The channel focuses primarily on general entertainment programming targeting a male audience, including action series and films, ...

, with much of the channel's programming simply being shown under the ITV brand. With capacity on the Freeview platform limited, and to avoid being in competition for the same genre of viewers, this seemed the inevitable conclusion. However, available to a much wider audience, Men & Motors enjoyed a (slightly unexpected) sharp increase in viewing figures. ITV were faced with the conundrum of replacing a channel with a well-known brand and enjoying a new popularity with a new, seemingly identical channel.

instead replaced the

ITV News Channel The ITV News Channel was a 24-hour television news channel in the United Kingdom which broadcast from 1 August 2000 to 23 December 2005. It was available on Sky, NTL:Telewest, and analogue cable. It was also available during the morning on I ...

on Freeview (between its broadcasting hours of 18:00 to 06:00), with Men & Motors still available on its own 24-hour slot. The News channel closed soon after, due to major competition from

Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel, live stream news network and news organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of ...

and

BBC News 24 The BBC News channel is a British free-to-air Public broadcasting, public broadcast television news channel owned and operated by the BBC. The channel is based at and broadcasts from Broadcasting House in the West End of London, West End of ...

and heavy financial losses. It was replaced fully by ITV4 and the CITV Channel. After less than a year on Freeview, Men & Motors had now been replaced. At 06:00 BST on 12 April 2006, Men & Motors ceased transmissions on digital terrestrial television. This was to allow ITV to launch the "participation television" channel,

ITV Play ITV Play was a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. The channel was devoted exclusively to phone-in quiz show programmes, expanding upon ITV1 and ITV2's late-night quiz programmes such as ...

, which has since been closed down itself. With limited bandwidth on the platform, and a desire to keep the entire ITV "family" (i.e. all channels carrying the ITV brand) on the free platform, Men & Motors was only available on satellite and cable television at the time of its closure. A possible merger with ITV4 had been on the cards, but in September 2007 ITV confirmed that it planned to dispose of Men & Motors.

Closure

On 2 April 2010,

ITV1 HD ITV1 HD is a British free-to-air HDTV, high-definition public broadcast television network operated by ITV plc, the company which is contracted to provide 13 ITV1 services across the UK. ITV1 HD simulcasts them in high-definition. ITV1 HD is avai ...

launched on Sky Digital channel 178, replacing Men & Motors. As a result, Men & Motors closed on 1 April at 6 a.m. on both Freesat and Sky Digital. On Virgin Media, Men & Motors was removed from the EPG on 25 March 2010 for "operational reasons" to add an ITV HD launch information screen. Most of the programmes that were shown on Men & Motors moved over to ITV4.

Assets purchase by One Media iP (2012-present)

On 11 December 2012, One Media iP announced that they had acquired all of the trademarks and content rights of Men & Motors from ITV plc, including approximately 1,600 hours of programming. One Media are currently repackaging the content for sale across a variety of digital platforms including the iTunes Store and YouTube. The original Men & Motors footage including full episodes and clips are available to watch on the Official Men & Motors YouTube channel. The company said that in 2020 the YouTube channel received 2.5 million viewing minutes per week. One Media iP relaunched Men & Motors as an online channel in February 2021 with new and archived shows.

References

External links

*
Men & Motors
on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Men and Motors 1996 establishments in the United Kingdom 2010 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Defunct television channels in the United Kingdom

Men and Motors Men & Motors was a men's lifestyle television channel in the UK. It was the last remaining station operated by the former ITV Digital Channels Ltd, Granada Sky Broadcasting joint venture, set up by ITV Granada, Granada Television (now part of IT ...

ITV television channels Men's interest channels Television channels and stations established in 1996 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2010 Television channels in the United Kingdom