Fuse Channel\'s Music News Show, \'Fuse News,\' to Start in February

As the recording industry prepares for next month’s Grammys and all the developments that come with that awards show, Fuse, the music-themed cable channel, will use the days leading up to the ceremony to introduce its own dedicated news program.

On Monday, Fuse is expected to announce that “Fuse News,” a daily show reporting on the music world and its personalities, will make its debut on Feb. 6. In addition to this regular half-hour program (which will be shown weeknights at 8 Eastern time), Fuse will also broadcast a live “Fuse News” special at the red carpet of the Grammy Awards on Feb. 10, starting at 6 p.m.

“The thing that really stands out for me with ‘Fuse News’ is that it’s very serious,” said Jack Osbourne, the rock-music scion who will be one of the show’s senior contributing correspondents. “We’re not trying to report on, like, ‘Oh, and Justin Bieber got drunk and tweeted this icture last night.’ We’re really staying away from that stuff - we’re trying to keep it a real, respectable news outlet.”

Fuse, which is owned by MSG Media and also shows the comedy game-show “Funny Or Die’s Billy On the Street,” announced in September that it was creating a dedicated news division for the channel and would be introducing its own news program.

Since then, Fuse said it had hired Rick Kaplan, a veteran TV journalism producer from CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC, and Audrey Gruber, a former producer at “The Early Show” on CBS, to be the senior executives on “Fuse News.”

“Fuse News” will be anchored by Alexa Chung, a tele! vision presenter and model who hosted the MTV series “It’s On With Alexa Chung,” and Matte Babel, who has been a host on the Canadian channel MuchMusic. Elaine Moran and Liz Walaszczyk, both TV and online journalists, will also be senior contributing correspondents. (Fuse said that Ashanti, the R&B singer and actress who was previously announced as an anchor, had instead joined the cast of the Lifetime drama “Army Wives.”)

Mr. Osbourne, who was himself closely associated with MTV as a star of its reality series “The Osbournes,” said in a telephone interview that his move to Fuse was not necessarily a defection to a rival network.

“The Fuse competitor that I was a part of, many, many years ago, has constantly changed, and the people that I was loyal to over there have long since moved on,” Mr. Osbourne said. “There was a time in my life when we were hand-in-hand with a competitive network. But progress is a beautiful thing.”