A.E.G. to Bring Its Music Festivals to AXS TV, Next year, AXS TV will broadcast more than 70 hours of live music from five of A.E.G.'s festivals. Those include Coachella and the country-themed Stagecoach, which both take place in April in Indio, Calif.; the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (or “Jazz Fest,” as its fans know it) and Rock on the Range, in Columbus, Ohio, both in May; and, in June, the Firefly Music Festival, in Dover, Del.
AXS TV, which was started in 2012, is owned by A.E.G. along with CBS, the Creative Artists Agency, Mark Cuban and Ryanmore Seacrest. The channel, which is not tracked by Nielsen, says it is available in 44 million households in the United States and Canada.
Charles Hirschhorn, the president of A.E.G. Television, said in an interview that this year AXS’s broadcasts of highlights from Coachella reached viewers in a total of 5.5 million homes, and its selections from Jazz Fest reached eight million homes.
“Each of these festivals is a multiday, multihour programming commitment that has its own brand awareness,” Mr. Hirschhorn said. “Having multiples of them and creating a festival season gives us scale and urgency, and helps us create a brand identity for the channel.”
Mercury Insurance will sponsor the broadcasts, as well as a series of four half-hour documentaries about the festivals, starting in March. AXS TV is also negotiating with festivals in which A.E.G. has no ownership stake.
A.E.G., which is controlled by the billionaire investor Philip F. Anschutz — its initials stand for Anschutz Entertainment Group — is the second-largest concert promoter in the world, after Live Nation Entertainment.
The AXS TV deal for its festivals comes as more concert companies are looking to promote video of their live events. In July, for example, Live Nation began a yearlong partnership with Yahoo to stream a concert online each day.
