THETUBE music television [npc] (I've been watching off & on 2 days now - _still_ no Patti)

["Dennis Moore" <clayboy56>]

I'm not much of a channel surfer, and likely if I heard/saw anything
about this my mind heard "utube" and I did not pay attention....but
desperately seeking some holiday-neutral content on the boob box
------ & walaaa!

RAWK ON!

http://www.thetubetvinfo.com/\

A SIMPLE IDEA THAT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT. THE TUBE IS PURE MUSIC
TELEVISION WITH NO REALITY SHOWS, NO GAME SHOWS AND NO AWARD SHOWS.
THE TUBE IS ONLY MUSIC, ALL MUSIC. THE BEST ARTISTS, THE BEST SONGS
AND THE BEST IMAGES OF ALL TIME. CREATED BY LES GARLAND, ONE OF THE
PIONEERS BEHIND MTV, VH-1 AND THE BOX, THE TUBE PRESENTATION IS
HONEST, INTELLIGENTAND RESPECTFUL OF MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE IT.

Press release primarily about markets at
http://www.sbgi.net/press/release_2006323_151.shtml

blurb from http://www.krrt.com/thetube/thetube.shtml:

New from KMYS, a 24-hour music television channel that features the
best artists, the best songs, and the best images of all time in a
pure all-music presentation.
Available NOW free over-the-air on...your digital tuner! (my note:
Available also on digital cable and such, see there website for how to
find it in your area.)

In a vast departure from the way music has traditionally been
presented on television, THE TUBE Music Network mines the archives for
classic performances from legendary artists and features them
alongside just-released videos by current artists. Live and conceptual
clips from Led Zeppelin, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Bob Marley, the
Rolling Stones, U2, Prince, Rod Stewart and the Eagles are mixed with
videos from today's best-selling acts like Norah Jones, James Blunt,
Dave Matthews, Sheryl Crow, Jack Johnson and Coldplay.

THE TUBE is guided by Les Garland, one of the creative forces who
helped shape music on television in the 1980's serving as
co-founder/originator of both MTV: Music Television and VH-1. In the
90's, Garland played an essential role in the domestic and
international launch of the interactive music channel, The Box, as
founder/developer.

The free broadcast of THE TUBE Music Network is achieved via a
relatively new concept referred to as "multicasting," which allows
broadcast stations to distribute secondary signals within the primary
signal's digital bandwidth. Anyone with a digital tuner can receive
THE TUBE 24 hours a day, free over-the-air on channel 35.2.

nice blog I found:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=17501750&blogID=206319592&MyToken=a328defc-3a10-496a-94ff-7c4a4170ff14

Saturday, December 16, 2006

  Totally Tubular
Category: Music

One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, when I was in the midst of my
end-of-the-semester ennui, I was sitting on my couch flipping channels
when I very accidentally stumbled across a channel I'd not seen on my
cable before. It was called The Tube and it was playing a John Mayer
video. Intrigued, I watched the video only to be surprised when
another video came on after it. I eventually changed the channel
again, but I kept flipping back to The Tube throughout the rest of the
day and saw, with increasing delight, that the channel seemed to play
only videos, in their entirety, with no crap rolling across the screen
and few commercial breaks.

Whoa.

I haven't seen a cable channel play straight videos since I was a kid
and the concept of music television, (let alone cable), was a
relatively new one. The big four, MTV, VH1, MTV2 and FUSE, have long
since turned to the dark side and have become less music television
and more music-inspired television. Or, perhaps, music secondary to
television television. That there could now -- in this ADHD, TMI world
-- be a channel that simply plays random (really random) videos
without a theme or a host or 'hip' graphics seems, dare I say, a tiny
bit subversive. It's almost sexy, really.

Or, at the very least, it's a little brave. Television, like so much
of the rest of the entertainment business, is ruled by following and
copying. Supposedly there's too much money at stake for anyone in the
entertainment world to stick out too far from the crowd. Rebellion,
like every other type of natural and normal human action or emotion,
has been prepackaged and tested by a focus group to be sold to a
particular demographic stereotypically defined. Cable channels are no
different and it's clear that the big four music television channels
have been trying to sell us on their own brand of rebellion for years
now. That this has always rang false to me is, doubtless, due to the
cookie cutter nature of their anarchy. Clearly they're less
iconoclastic than conformist and, I feel, music television and music
videos have suffered as a result.

Not that the Tube isn't big business. Au contraire! As far as I can
tell, it's provided by the newly formed CW (WB and Fox hybrid)
television station and was created by a former MTV and VH1 exec. In
the weeks since I first started watching it, there have been more and
more different kinds of companies that have bought advertising time in
between video blocks. And the channel does take time during every
commercial break to play attractive ads about itself. But this has
not, thus far, affected the videos.

Each video is simply introduced with a written placard at the
beginning that states the band, the song and the album or performance
from which the video is taken. As the video plays, there is a
discrete, yet easily discernible, scroll of the band and song names in
the lower left-hand of the screen. But this scroll is not on
throughout the run of the video and it doesn't impede the view of the
video. The Tube logo is on at all times, but like the scroll, it isn't
large or obnoxious. It's white and in simple lettering in the lower
right-hand of the screen. It's evident, as it isn't on other video
channels, that showing videos is the main point of this channel. The
videos aren't an excuse for other things deemed more important. The
videos themselves are important and they're presented with the respect
with which they should be considering the work that goes into making
them and the music that inspires them.

Besides being respectful of videos and music, I like very much that
The Tube shows a variety of videos. I've seen old videos and live
performances by artists like Bob Marley, The Moody Blues, Janis
Joplin, Led Zeppelin, The Doobie Brothers, Tina Turner, Rush, The
Rolling Stones, B. B. King, John Lennon, David Bowie, The Who, The
Clash and Blondie, to name but a small few. But I've also seen newer
videos and live performances by artists such as Death Cab For Cutie,
Franz Ferdinand, Gorillaz, Coldplay, Diane Krall, Keane, Moby, Jet,
John Mayer and Norah Jones. I've been happy to see videos by random
artists like Jesus Jones and Soul 2 Soul and random videos like the
ones for INXS's "The One Thing" and "People Are People" by Depeche
Mode. I discovered the beautiful, if odd, footage shot for Simply
Red's "Holding Back The Years" and REM's "It's The End Of The World As
We Know It." I've seen any number of Cure videos and performances I've
never seen before anywhere else and I've happily watched as Eric
Clapton, looking very good in a duster jacket and beard, sings about
being a "Forever Man" in the video of the same name.

You're never entirely certain what you're going to see next on the
channel, actually, and I find this refreshing and highly entertaining.
If there's one wish I do have for the channel it is that it would show
a variety of videos in different music genres. At the moment
mainstream rock and pop are fairly well-represented, but more r&b or
alternative, for example, would be nice additions. But, otherwise, I
find myself quite happy with the channel overall. As long as it sticks
with keeping the variety and the primacy of music and videos to
channel programming, I don't think The Tube can go far wrong. It's
truely doing something unusual and, sad to say, innovative in the
contemporary world of American music television. Brava.