Just a couple of months before the start of TV4's new free-to-air music channel, Juice TV is following suit. The local 24-hour music broadcaster - which aired its first music vid on Sky in November 1998 - will go free-to-air in Auckland from midday today on UHF channel 57. Nearly five years and 499,000 videos since it began, it will celebrate with the music video for the feelers' Pressure Man, the first of the 150,000 local vids it says it has played over nearly five years.
Meanwhile, for the first time since the Top 50 began almost 30 years ago, four of the top five album spots in the weekly New Zealand record charts are by Kiwi artists. Hayley Westenra is at number one with new album Pure, followed by Bic Runga's Beautiful Collision, which has been in the charts for 53 weeks.
Although recent visitors Coldplay spoil the Kiwi run with third place, Mareko's White Sunday and Elemeno P's Love and Disrespect clinched the number four and five spots.
THEY'RE LAUGHING AT US OVER THERE: By the time you read this, Edinburgh will be splitting its sides. We hope. A contingent of New Zealand comedy acts is at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Flight of the Conchords leading the pack. The folk parody duo are back at the Fringe for the second time and with them are P-Funk Chainsaw - aka 2002 Billy T Comedy Award winner Dai Henwood - and Rhys Darby, who has been honing his skills on the Brit comedy circuit this past year. And expat Mike Boon - something of a cult figure in Scotland since settling in Edinburgh this year - launches The Boon Show Live. That's a lotta laughs.
WALK THIS WAY RENEE?: Just as we've recovered from Coldplay's Chris Martin bringing his more-famous fiance Gwyneth Paltrow to town, there might be another rockstar-filmstar double on the way.
Well, that's if White Stripes' frontman Jack White brings his present squeeze, Renee Zellweger, with him when he plays here in early October. The pair, who met on the set of the movie Cold Mountain, were in a car accident together in Detroit a few weeks ago, with White sustaining a compound fracture to the index finger of his left hand, causing the cancellation of some European dates. But with this week's announcement of two New Zealand shows it appears White is on the mend.
RUMOUR DEPT: Another Split Enz reunion might be on the cards - a show in front of the Sydney Opera House to coincide with the Rugby World Cup. Wonder if they still have those silver fern-ed black tracksuits they once wore on one of their homecoming tours in the late 70s?
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