For over a decade, hundreds of thousands of viewers across Greater Manchester tuned in to their dedicated TV channel to keep up with local news, sports, and entertainment. It was where some of the most familiar faces we now wake up to each morning cut their teeth as reporters and presenters.Channel M began broadcasting on February 14, 2000, as Manchester Student Television (MSTV). The station owned by the Guardian Media Group was a free-to-air local, terrestrial TV channel in conjunction with Salford University.In 2004, the channel was rebranded as Channel M and launched on the NTL digital cable platform for viewers in Greater Manchester, mid-Lancashire, and Cheshire. As its audience grew, the entertainment-based station began to place a greater emphasis on local news.The channel's news output (produced in conjunction with the Manchester Evening News) was expanded to include breakfast, lunchtime and late evening bulletins, a weekly news review and live events.But lifestyle, music, and entertainment shows remained part of the channel's eclectic output. Some of the best-known include the chaotic Frank Sidebottom's Proper Telly Show, the weekly music show City Life Social, and the video game review series Re:Loaded, which helped Channel M gain viewers nationally.Many older viewers will also remember a familiar face from their own childhoods: ex-BBC Children's TV broom-cupboard presenter Andy Crane as the face of the evening news. Two other young presenters, who later became regular presenters on BBC Breakfast, also started their early careers at Channel M.BBC Breakfast presenters Nina Warhurst and Ben Boulos started their broadcast journalism careers at the channel. Ben, who has used his mum's surname, Boulous, since 2021 but before was known as Ben Bland, spoke to the M.E.N about how he started his career at Channel M after finishing his post-grad in broadcast journalism in 2006."It doesn't feel that long ago except when I look back at old clips. Everything looks so different, including me," said Ben, now the specialist Business Presenter on BBC Breakfast.Ben started his career as a reporter at Channel M in 2007. The station was expanding and taking on new staff as it was about to launch a three-hour breakfast show."I went in and they showed me to my desk. The desk that was free happened to be right next to the desk of their main anchor at the time, Andy Crane."That was a pinch me moment. Here I was in my first full-time grown up TV job and I'm sitting next to the guy that I used to watch on telly when I got back from school," he said.When Ben started, the Channel M studios were based in the Urbis building in Manchester city centre. They later moved to the former M.E.N Media headquarters at Spinningfields, which was used as a secondary studio base for some news bulletins.Ben said it was a workplace where "everyone did everything", and as he gained hands-on skills in various roles at the channel, he quickly moved into presenting. Each day, he could be sent out to any part of Greater Manchester to cover everything from small local events to large breaking news stories in central Manchester."Our main competition was North West Tonight at the BBC and Granada Reports for ITV. Both long established programmes with established infrastructure and audiences," he said."We had these news chasers, these jeeps, that had Channel M branding all over them. 'The first for breaking news' or whatever the strapline was across the side of them."The way we had to compete was in terms of creativity and offering something different and doing it in a way that was more accessible maybe, more engaging, sometimes more fun when appropriate."It was a job that kept the young reporter and presenter on his toes, testing his ability to improvise. He remembers popping into a local bakery to buy a doughnut, which he then used to help explain to viewers the inner and outer areas of Manchester affected by the proposed congestion charges.Despite lacking the budget of its rivals, Ben says Channel M's brilliant editorial and production teams enabled it to punch above its weight as a broadcaster. Other aspects that contributed to Channel M's success were the endless supply of newsworthy events in Manchester and Greater Manchester.Ben said: "There was enough going on for it to sustain news programmes. All the sport, you have two massive football clubs in City and United. You've got Sale Sharks, you've cricket at Old Trafford. There's always big bands playing and new bands coming through so they had news programmes, sports programmes, entertainment, lifestyle. As a city area Greater Manchester just had so much.Another factor in the channel's success was its 'strong Manchester identity'. "They [Channel M's viewers] had such a sense of ownership that they would feel that they could tell you what they wanted you to cover. It wasn't like, 'Oh, we'd like you to come and cover this event.' They said, 'I'm going to email you details of an event we're doing in our village, and we'd like you there to arrive at 10 in the morning.'Ben was born in Leicester but mostly grew up on the East London/Essex border, near Romford. And yet it was Manchester's strong identity and welcoming character that made him immediately feel at home at Channel M.Everyone at Channel M had nicknames," Ben said. "I realised once they give you a nickname it was a sign you'd been accepted, you were part of the family."There were a few non-Mancunians on the team, but I arrived and very much did not sound like I was from Manchester in the slightest. So the nickname that was assigned to me was Your Lordship or Lord Bland, as I was Bland at the time."It was a connection forged between Ben and the city that really hit hard when he later covered the terror attack at the Manchester Arena Ariana Grande concert for the BBC.Ben said: "I was on a world news shift on the BBC the morning after it happened. I was anchoring that for several hours in the morning. I was looking at the footage at the arena and the street outside Victoria Station and the ambulances and police."It was probably one of the news events that hit me hardest. After we finished that shift I got home and sat down and I was watching it more at home, and thought that's the view - the road outside Victoria Station and the arena - that's what I looked out from our Urbis news room. You then feel incredibly close to a story although you're far away from it."That was the strength of feeling of the time I spent there and how much it was rooted within me."Ben eventually left Channel M to become a political reporter for BBC Radio Essex. Following the economic crash of 2008, and later the Guardian Media Group sold many of its newspaper titles, including the Manchester Evening News, most of Channel M's staff were made redundant by 2010. The channel ceased broadcasting entirely in 2012.Ben said: "Sadly, I don't think anything like Channel M exists anymore. But that's the sort of place you want to go because that's where you learn."What's really nice is that now I go to Media City there are so many ex-Channel M faces there across all jobs. It's so lovely to see what springboard that one channel was."I think the broadcast landscape today would be a lot poorer were it not for all the people who had their first break, or developed their early careers, at Channel M."He added: "Nina [BBC Breakfast presenter, Nina Warhurst] and I when we presented Channel M Breakfast together, we used to sit there and talk about it and say it's so exciting that we're doing this. But do you think we'll ever get to do this for real on proper grown-up telly - imagine if that happens one day?"We've both remembered that when we presented BBC Breakfast together. It's one of those moments you think, gosh, if our younger selves knew that we'd be sitting here now doing it, we'd be thrilled."
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