Diddy Launches His Revolt Music Channel

For all the thousands of channels on TV these days, Sean Combs says there’s still a gaping hole where contemporary music ought to be.

So on Monday, he’s launching Revolt, a channel dedicated to music and the popular culture around it.

“There’s no destination channel any more for music,” says Combs, better known as P. Diddy. “Revolt will become for music what ESPN is for sports and CNN is for news.”

Starting a new channel isn’t for the faint of heart, as Oprah Winfrey’s battle to get OWN on its feet has demonstrated.

Making music work on television has also been a challenge. For all the cultural impact of MTV, it never had a huge audience, it was criticized in the beginning for largely excluding black music, and in recent years it has become more a reality, drama and lifestyle channel.

Diddy told TV writers this summer he’s up to the challenge, citing the way he built his own brand as an artist, promoter, actor and entrepreneur.

“I know where we want to go, and I surround myself with people who can get us there,” he said.

Revolt’s CEO is Keith Clinkscales, a long-time media executive who cofounded Vibe magazine with Quincy Jones and most recently partnered with ESPN on The Shadow League, a digital sports platform.

The president is Andy Schuon, who has been an executive at Warner Bros. Records, Ticketmaster and MTV.

“Revolt reminds me a lot of MTV in the early days,” said Schuon, “except now, with social media, the playing field is so much broader.”

Val Boreland says that’s why she left Comedy Central, where she was senior vice president of program and multiplatform strategy, to become Revolt’s executive VP.

“The audience today doesn’t just want to watch,” says Boreland. “It wants to be involved. We’ll let them do that.”

As Diddy explains it, the viewers will help shape Revolt’s programming through social media.

That means allowing “total creative freedom” for artists, he said — more like the Internet than a TV channel.

“We don’t look on social media as competition,” Diddy says. “We embrace it.”

As for musical styles, rap will be prominent, but it won’t be the sole focus. “We’ll also give a platform for electronica and alternative,” Diddy says. “If it’s happening in music, it will happen on Revolt.”

He also envisions Revolt bringing the so-called millennial generation — a phrase he says he doesn’t like — back to television.

“People say this generation has turned away from TV,” he said. “But that’s not because they don’t like it. It’s because they’ve had to turn to other media to find what they want.

“We’re going to change that.”

The seed for Revolt was Comcast’s 2009 deal to acquire a majority stake in NBCUniversal. To win that approval, Comcast agreed to carry several minority-owned channels, and Revolt is one of the first.




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