'Zik was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 channel, owned by AB Groupe

AB Groupe

The AB Groupe is a French business group in the field of broadcasting. It was founded in 1977 by Jean-Luc Azoulay and Claude Berda as a music production company, and in 1987 went into the world of television.- Television :-External links:* *...

.

The start

The channel was originally launched only on AB Sat

AB Sat

AB Sat is a package of digital channels offered by the satellite companies Hot Bird and Astra and marketed in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. The channels are all run by the cable operators and certain networks ADSL. ABSAT has a stake in pay channel TNT and of two services in free TNT...

, in 2000 running from 17:00 to midnight on the German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 music channel Onyx (owned by AB Sat) which replaced channel 11 on the AB Sat collection, France Courses (now Équidia). The channel was the offshoot of Nostalgie la télé and Musique classique

Musique classique

Created on 2 April 1996, Musique Classique was a television channel owned by AB Groupe.The programming consisted of classical concerts, opera, lyrical works, and magazine programmes Created on 2 April 1996, Musique Classique was a television channel owned by AB Groupe.The programming consisted of...

 in the musical channels of AB Sat. The programming was different to any previously seen in France. The channel was shown via the Hot Bird

Hot Bird

Hot Bird is the name of a popular family of satellites operated by Eutelsat, located at 13°E over the Equator and with a transmitting footprint over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East....

 satellite and aimed to partner with some of France's biggest clubs. However, success never arrived.

2003 relaunch

In 2003, AB Sat relaunched the channel in order to show itself as a black music channel. The channel was included in the CanalSat

CanalSat

CanalSat is a French digital satellite and DSL pay television service. It is owned by Vivendi with a 65% share, minority shareholders are Lagardère , TF1 and M6...

 programming. Its audience share was 0.1 %.

Return or "bankruptcy"

In 2005, the marketplace intensified with the arrival of MTV Base

MTV Base

MTV Base is a 24-hour music and general entertainment channel from MTV Networks International. The channel focuses primarily on music from the world of R'n'B, hiphop, reggae, soul and urban. The MTV Base brand first launched in the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland on July 1, 1999,...

, Trace TV

Trace TV

Trace Urban is a French music video television network devoted to play urban contemporary music videos, founded by the French businessmen Olivier Laouchez and Claude Grunitzky....

, M6 Music Black

M6 Music Black

M6 Music Black is a French television own and operated by M6, devoted to play Contemporary R&B and Hip hop music....

, and the froup arrived to stop its black music output and become more phone-in oriented. (S.M.S, on-screen chat).

2006 Relaunch

In June 2006, 'Zik became "The 100 % rap channel" and launched its internet site: www.zik.fr

It is available through subscription on all cable operator and digital television networks.

Decision of 'Zik 31 December 2007

'Zik, the hiphop and rap channel owned by the AB Groupe, ceased broadcast on 31 December 2007. The channel was on air from 7:00 to 22:30 and was shared with the channel XXL

XXL (French TV)

XXL is a television channel in France that is dedicated to pornography and erotica. Created in 1996 and transmitted by the AB Sat satellite, it was at the time the first French channel to broadcast pornography every evening...

. It was replaced by the channel A TV Promo (which aims to sell Bis Télévisions) for an indefinite period.

Executives

President :

• Jean-Michel Fava

Vice-President :

• Claude Berda

Programming director :

• Richard Maroko

Marketing and Business Development director:

• Gregg Bywalski