Oddity Archive: Episode 192 - Jukebox Network (& other UHF music video channels)
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- Опубліковано 22 лип 2024
- Catch all your favorite music videos on The Box…the Cardboard Box, that is!
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I like to imagine that Ben has held on to the same box for all of these years.
I picture it making the big move in it's own hermetically sealed container, riding shotgun in the U-haul.
It is the same box I started with. It also rode with me in my car when I left Colorado.
Video Cardboard Box, every Thursday night on KLAK-13 (scrambled, subscriber-only)
But, scrambled with the industry standard, the Video Cipher II
What's the price? I'd say $29.99 a month, plus installation fees.
Psst, hey, buddy, want to buy a de-scrambler box?
Installation is reportedly at $499.99.
They will track you down if you attempt viewing without the necessary decoder box.
In Mexico, we had only one attempt, a quite late attempt, of having a music video channel, also on UHF. The story behind it is quite convoluted. It began in the early 1980's as XHTC-TV channel 16, a station that was licensed but never went on air. Later, the station was bought by entrepreneur Raúl Aréchiga Espinosa, and re-licensed it as XHRAE-TV channel 28 after a dispute with the ministry of communications (Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transportes), that somehow allowed it to survive despite never going on air. However, the guy who bought the station also couldn't put the station on air but as the license was going to expire and wouldn't be able to renew it due to not being operational, around 1999, the station finally went on air with a hastily-made music video-only programming just to keep the station license alive.
The owners of the station wanted to make it a normal channel, so eventually they started airing shows from the Mexican cable network TVC (possibly the network with the name with least effort put into it as its initials actually mean TV by Cable) and gradually phased out the music programming. However, Aréchiga's main business, a small airline called Aero California, was going into trouble, so he was forced to shutdown the station and look for a new owner. It was sold to Olegario Vázquez Raña, owner of Grupo Imagen, in 2006 and the channel was relaunched as Cadenatres, a channel that was aiming to become the third major national network, which actually did achieve when Grupo Imagen was granted the bulk license for 128 stations across Mexico to have a network of their own, now known as Imagen Televisión (as in usual fashion, no effort in the naming).
The station, known since 2008 as XHTRES-TV (now XHTRES-TDT after the digital switchover), became the flagship station for the news network Excélsior TV, after Cadenatres was dropped in 2015 in favor of the new Imagen Televisión network. This year, last february to be more precise, the station changed management once more and is currently being leased to Heraldo Media Group and relaunched the station to carry the cable news network, Heraldo TV (have you noticed a pattern in the namings by now?).
Very interesting, even with no previous knowledge of any of these
Back when I was in high school, which was mid to late 2000s, there was a channel called "The Tube" ... which wasn't exactly non-cable but was one of those "Digital multicast" channels. It played music videos from the 70s to early to mid 90s and would repeat the same few videos until they could mix in newer old videos. The only time they didn't play music videos was on early Saturday mornings when they had to, by law, play educational programming... because the station aired little to no ads. It died in late 2007 and the last video played on it was "Woke up this morning (Chosen One Mix)" by Alabama 3
I remember watching this and downloading the songs I heard on it from Ares Galaxy. I thought I was the only one, because even though my siblings watched it with me neither of them remember it.
I fondly remember this channel.
Yes, I remember the local NBC affiliate had The Tube on one of its subchannels from 2005-2007. It ran a "demo" hour long of videos on the main channel from 2 am - 3 am.
The Tube was one of the first digital multicast channels in my area.
@@stillbuyvhs I think it was for many. I liked it
Ayy you pronounced Worcester, Framingham, and Marlborough correctly. You get a cookie! Seriously, not even the local Boston news reporters can pronounce them correctly sometimes.
Wuss-ter, Fray-ming-ham, Marrl-burrow. It's pretty obvious when someone from out of the market joins a station!
Boston TV news and station affiliations could be an episode all on its own.
I was 2 for 3, which isn't bad for a non-New Englander...thanks to this episode, I now know the correct pronunciation of Framingham (which, in retrospect, should've been obvious by its spelling!).
@@needfuldoer4531 Wistuh :D
If this was England, only Worcester and Framingham would be correct.
10:53 As someone from New England, I can confirm that clam chowdah is pretty much all you need to know.
I remember watching The Box in the late 1990s over channel 19 in Oklahoma City (I was of elementary school-age then, mind you), and the video selection at the time was actually quite varied between hip-hop/R&B, rock, pop and alternative music. I first heard Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” and “Say You’ll Be There,” Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” on the network and they played them quite a bit in the 1997-98 period.
I had "The Box" when my family had cable in the 90s. Watching music videos that VH1 and MTV would play at certain hours. They played them at random 24/7 with numerous request! Also had it again when my family and I moved to Oregon for a couple months in 1998 and 1999. I still miss The Box!
I have only the faintest of memories of Channel 66 running music videos. I was REALLY young at the time and everything is hazy. Even as a very little kid, I knew there was something weird about a non-cable channel running music videos. Don't know how much exposure to it I even got, frankly. Anyway, in between the Home Shopping Crap and the eventual evolution to a low powered Spanish Language station, channel 66 became "The Hub" somewhere between the tail end of the 90's and the beginning of the 00's. It ran old TV reruns, but the thing was HYPED! They had advertisements in subway cars to announce the channel's rebranding. I can only remember it having Cheers, the anchor show since it was Boston based, Married with Children, and Star Trek TNG. Didn't last long, and it was kind of a disappointment it didn't. I'm sure someone has some old advertising material to share.
And yes. There was a very brief period of time, couldn't have been more than a year or two around 2004 where Boston did see an over the air MTV2 broadcast. I remember that fondly, as I was able to watch a bunch of Beavis and Butthead and Celebrity Death Match reruns, as well as some weird-ass show where they used video game mods to perform music videos. I missed the hell out of it when it was gone.
mightyfilm I remember watching celebrity deathmatch on mtv2 as well like around 2009 or 2008 I think
Yeah, back in the late 90s/early 00s, USA Broadcasting (which owned what was then WHUB, along with Miami's WAMI, Atlanta's WHOT, aka "Hotlanta 34" and now Univision affiliate WUVG, etc) head Barry Diller wanted to bring back independent TV stations and locally-focused programming, noting that they were a dying breed, as part of a project called "CityVision".
In fact, the former WBTB/WWHT/WHSE in NJ was also going to switch to this format and become WORX (aka "The Worx 68"), but due to financial problems, USA Broadcasting put all its stations up for sale in 2000, only weeks before Ch. 68 was set to flip.
Here in Mexico City we used to had a music videos local UHF Channel, Canal 28 (XHRAE). Broadcasted from 8 am to 8 pm, except Día de la Independencia or Día del Niño., That channel was "the MTV of the people" or "the poor versiof of MTV", but aired American, British and Hispanic music videos back in the day, until 2006.
In Estado de México, the repeater of Canal 9 (XEQ), when the national anthem finalized, they used to broadcast most of the time, mexican pop music videos until the transmission turned on.
They had one of these on our cable network powered by the mighty Commodore Amiga. (robospeak) You Be The Vee Jay. Call a 900 number to pick songs.
I primarily remember it for running back to back to back to back 2 Live Crew "Me So Horny".
I don't know why. :P
No wonder, why the channel must've been taken off the air.
I remember actually convincing my Mom to order "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot from The Box when it first popped in like, um, 91, 92?
Needless to say 7 year old me and my Mom was... um... surprised at the actual content of the video.
(I honestly like the song, and of course I had no idea what the hell the lyrics meant at the time)
As someone from the New England area, props for getting most of the Massachusetts stuff right. Being born in the era where MTV wasn't really music-oriented anymore, it feels surreal that Bostonians actually had their own alternative to MTV in the 80s.
And as someone from Fall River, Lizzie Borden and the Axes gets two thumbs up.
Live in Rhode Island, and 5 year-old me for some strange reason was scared of the V66 station identification videos (then again, I also remember videos promoting Wrestlemania 2 would scare me, so I guess there was something about low frequency noises scaring children) LOL.
It was the old Viacom logo that did it for me...the logo itself was before my time (I think it was the '60s version...I just remember the giant dark "V of Doom" running up the screen at me with this freakish series of three tones that made me think aliens had landed or something 😳😬😅) but reruns gonna rerun...I was still watching TOS reruns on local broadcast affiliates back then...
I can tell you those tones did it for me each time, I still can't watch that logo without feeling a tightening in my chest 😵
When I grew up, the Jukebox Network would scare me with their video selection menu background, especially with music and the DTMF tones between the commercials and advertisements. One factor on why I loved the Jukebox Network.
I had no idea that so many of these channels existed, You're outro reminded me of Ben speaking from the depths of the Black Lodge.
They used to have a UHF channel, in Chicago, and Joliet, IL called "music 66" they used to carry the music video network, this was during the mid to late 80's..I once saw the firm"s video, for the song "satisfaction guaranteed" which featured Jimmy Page playing slide guitar,...with a beer bottle..in one scene
I lived in Houston when channel 5 was on the air. None of our TVs ever picked it up clearly. The best was a little black and white set where if atmospheric conditions were right and you played with the fine-tuning knob and hit pay dirt, you could see a really snowy picture but with decent audio. Like with a lot of stations received via rabbit ears, where you were in the room had a strong effect on whether the station came in clearly and channel 5 only came in when you were in a spot in the room occupied by furniture. You'd rarely even see a blip of it when changing between channels 2 and 8 and as such, my brother and I often forgot it even existed. Years later, I remembered that channel 5 was once a thing but it was so hard to find information about it, I would've thought I'd imagined it if I weren't so dead sure that it in fact existed at one time.
I was lucky enough to pick up Hit Video USA off my parents' satellite dish in the late 80's. Never realized they were sending out their 5-6 hours of programming for local affiliates to re-air.
MTV didn't have a complete stranglehold for music video clips- just the 25 or so that were most popular at the time. I remember videos for songs I would not have otherwise seen- such as "Boom There She Was" by Scritti Politti featuring Roger and "Middle Of Nowhere" by House Of Schock. MTV didn't bother with a lot of the pop non-Top 40 songs. I enjoyed it a lot and it was an invaluable resource for my 80's music collection.
Oh god, I remember The Box down in FL. They used to overload Pump Up the Volume by MAARS and the Pee Wee Herman Rap, plus Vanilla Ice.
I find it ironic you mentioned MuchMusic in the intro - during the 90s, when Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks) was bringing MuchMusic to us here in America (on the channel that eventually mutated into Fuse), they did have a couple low-power affiliates: WDNI-CD (then W53AV), the Telemundo affiliate for Indianapolis, and WMYO-CD (then W24BW) in Louisvillw (currently a Laff station). You really should do a video on MuchMusic, Citytv and everything else Moses Znaimer was involved in (and the American attempts to copy his style). One of those attempts was by Barry Diller, who owned HSN in the late 90s and began converting HSN's OTA affils into Citytv-esque indie stations, with the first attempt being in Miami (WAMI, Whammy 69). It failed after a couple of years and he sold the stations to Univision. One of those stations that got converted to the WAMI format? The old V-66, or as it was known, WHUB, Hub 66. And U-68/WFUT-66? They would've been converted, as WORX, "The Worx 68", but just weeks before the switch, Diller sold out.
DirecTV had MuchMusic USA and M2 (MTV2) when I was a teenager, and I watched a lot of both. Before UA-cam, watching obscure old videos was really mindblowing. MTV and VH1 only played crappy pop videos in between reality shows.
@@5roundsrapid263 Channel 59 in Fresno Ca. used to carry the original MuchMusic channel on weekend nights and some holidays back in the 90's. The Box was carried on C43. One of Sir Mix-a-Lot's videos, Put 'em on the Glass was removed after some controversy.
@@Art7220 BRO! I lived in Fresno around that time and I remember that mix a lot video was on The Box all the time. I’m surprised your comment is the only one I’ve seen so far that mentions The Box. I moved to San Antonio in like 93 or 94 and I remember they had The Box too so I thought more people would mention it
How is that ironic?
We had The Box here, and I remember a friend of mine and I ordering 2 videos. They never ended up playing after watching for 3 hours. However some videos played as you said 10 times in an hour.
Well, I learned something new today. Didn't know about any of these.
I remember "The Box" music network!! Channel 11 from my hometown of Enid. First video I saw on that network was M. Jackson's smooth criminal by Alien Ant Farm.
2000 to 2003.
Norman, OK here. We watched The Box around the late 90s, despite the spotty service. Lol
Where I lived, they ran the Canadian music channel Much Music on a low power UHF station. Not the later Much Music USA that was the official version for America that later became Fuse. This was before then in the late '80s and they just literally broadcast the actual Canadian version right off the satellite feed, I'm pretty sure totally illegally.
Was it from Fresno?
17:59 Hey, that guy use to edit Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Cool.
i know this was for uhf station but i can remember the uk cable one and seeing the listing for the tracks at the back on the local cable tv magazine, also thanks this has taking my mind off things for a bit :)
I've got some old footage for the UK Box channel (1998-1999) as it was available on NTL cable in the area. Those video listings with no sound in the background between songs.
The kicker is it is back in Liverpool at my parents house along with 2 giant boxes of VHS tapes. I can't visit thanks to Covid-19 but now would be the ideal time to start uploading.
"Microtransaction based model of brodcast"
VidEA Jukebox
Ah, The Box. Have a lot of memories of that growing up. I remember seeing some really good indie stuff advertised on there like Built to Spill, among the more mainstream stuff back in the early 90's.
My most notorious memory of the Box though is when some crazy lunatics kept ordering "That's just my Baby Daddy" by B-Rock and The Bizz for literally 3 days straight (And I mean straight, nothing but that played for the entire weekend). It almost certainly had to be a hack, otherwise some crazy person was out of thousands of dollars over the 90's version of a meme.
You have no clue how much I would love to see a tape of that or any non-anecdotal evidence. Would probably die laughing knowing that this genuinely happened and went on for THAT long. The song "My Baby Daddy" runs for 3:34, and across an entire three-day weekend this video would've played for 4320 minutes for a total of 1210 times. Another comment here says a song on The Box cost $1.99, so this individual would be out $2410 over a meme. That is hilarious.
Didn't know about this actually happening besides shows such as Friday Night Videos. Very awesome!
And the ABC network, once had a music video show, they too, once aired on Friday nights....it was called, "ABC Rocks"
I remember watching V66's 'home made' video of Prince's song Raspberry Beret, complete with shots of the spinning record and close-ups of the album cover art.
From August 1990 to December 2000, I've had a good decade of keeping my eyes on the Jukebox Network. Remember one of it's slogans was "The Box That Rocks"? I love those DTMF tones and the menus. And Video Music Box rules!!!
I remember, reading an advertisement, in the Chicago newspaper, it showed, that the juke box network, was on a pay sattelite service.. back in the early 80's..you had to buy the dish to be installed by a technician..and you had to subscribe to the service.. (this was Long before, "direct TV" and "Dish Network"..came out in the 90's)
I do remember it very well. I first remember the Jukebox Network since I was a youngster, and I remember being recalled that the Jukebox Network ran a music video called “Justify My Love” by Madonna which was the original uncensored version played for the first time while MTV and VH1 banned at the time.
I remember The Box. The home of Luke/2 Live Crew and Poison Clan videos. Plus The Box got everyone in my high school singing the chorus to Clarence Carter's "Strokin'" out loud!
Basically The Box was where naughty Hip Hop and Freestyle videos could be seen, I remember Sir Mix A Lot's "Baby Got Back" getting more airtime there than on MTV or VH-1.
I remember the Jukebox Network, aka The Box, very well.
The mere mention of it brings back memories.
I enjoyed this WAY too much. Plus it's always nice to hear someone mention Extreme again, lol.
I used to watch U68. They would sometimes to artist spotlight type shows showing a number of videos by the same artist. That was how I first heard Kate Bush.
For several months in 2008 and 2009, then WKRP-LP (yes, that's right, WKRP) now WRTN in the Nashville area aired VJ-less country music videos for between 6 to 10 hours each day, with public domain programming filling the rest of the hours. Some of the videos were CMT quality while others looked homemade.
Another TV Music Station did you did forget was WTMV Ch. 32 in Tampa/St. Petersburg, FL, which like WVJV-TV, used the V branding, branding as V-32. The station’s owner, Dan Johnson, had been the former mayor of St. Petersburg Beach and worked at a Classical Music Station in Safety Harbor. The station operated out of Lakeland and had an All-Music Video Format. When the station moved its Studios to Tampa in 1988, the Station dumped the Music Video Channel format and became a general independent station, as well as also carrying programming not seen on the local “Big 3” Network affiliates in Tampa or Orlando. There’s a couple of videos from around 1987 on UA-cam of VeeJay George Lowe thanking Dan Hogan for the News in Music but other than that, that’s pretty much it. Channel 32 is now a General Independent Station known is WMOR-TV. This is coming from a Tampa Bay Area Native.
It's funny that you mention how most of these stations went on to become future Home Shopping & Univision stations, because there's actually a part of that transition that's a story in itself for a (possibly) future edition of the Archive. In the late 1990s, Barry Diller (longtime Media mogul who ran ABC, Paramount & Fox among others). Bought all the UHF Home Shopping channels in an effort to start a new network of "Hyper Local" television. Long story short, there's a reason why those stations eventually became Univision affiliates; but not unlike their former "Video Jukebox" counterparts, they too gained a beloved cult following. Below is a CNN story from 2000 about one of the stations Diller bought, WAMI-TV 69:
ua-cam.com/video/1sO7P1wAMPQ/v-deo.html
Oooooh, a history lesson episode, my favorite.
I grew up on CMC here in the Bay Area. They played a lot of local artists.
I remembered the Jukebox airing on New Orleans low power affiliate K10NG TV broadcasting on Channel 10
5:54 - So just like a true jukebox, you could have it play a song over and over! Reminds me of when I was 11.... Back in 1984 me and my sister were at a pub (with parental accompaniment), and they had a jukebox that would give you 10 plays for a pound. We put in our pound, and requested Agadoo ten times. The first time it came on would have been bad enough for most patrons, but on its tenth play, peoples eyes were literally rolling on the floor!
Love that song, I'd of been well pleased in that pub!
I never had cable for most of my childhood, so The Box was the only alternative to MTV, in all its fuzzy UHF glory. Never did order any videos, as my mom wouldn't have given me permission anyway. I wish I had in hindsight, as you're totally right about the videos repeated ad nauseam thing. I just watched intently hoping someone out there would order _something_ different for a change, as I even got sick of seeing vids I liked play over and over and over again.
I wonder how many times UHF kids heard "Fonda aint got a motor in the back of her Honda" between 1991 and 1994?
You've completely ignored the granddaddy of all of these music video broadcasts, The Now Explosion. TNE began at WATL-TV channel 36 in Atlanta, GA on March 14, 1970. It lasted on ch. 36 for just 13 weeks, then moved to Ted Turner's stations in Atlanta and Charlotte for another 13 weeks. After that, the show was syndicated nationally. thenowexplosion.com/
I actually have vague childhood memories of The Box from the late 90s. I dunno how I discovered it but I watched it constantly.
I came of age in the early-mid 1970's! I LOVE everything you do here at Oddity Archive! Sorry to skew your demographics!, LOL! But, It's actually FUN to see "Our" stuff shown, explained, "deconstructed" and "riffed" All us "kids" from the '1920s thru the '70s,'80s AND '90s - early '00s ALL grew up with BROADCAST media, it's highs and MORE FUN, It's lows and it's sometimes just plain weirdness.
Ten watts? For television? You wouldn't even get from the lounge chair to the TV across the room on 10 watts! A TV signal needs at least 1 Kw(thousand Watts) for the audio and 10Kw for the video signal to make it reach the end of the street where you live! To transmit a "low-power" signal to a township, you'd need at least 50 Kw audio and 500 Kw video ERP(Effective Radiated Power).
0.5MW /town?
Sounds quite big.
@@jareknowak8712 In the analogue days, the station I watch here in Newcastle, NSW Australia transmitted in the megawatt range with 10 megawatts of video signal for every 1 megawatt of audio signal emitted from its transmitter, located at Mount Sugarloaf, out past West Wallsend(studio linked to transmitter via microwave). If I recall, the audio signal was 10 Megawatts and video was 100 Megawatts.Station NBN-Newcastle was the local commercial broadcaster and had to cover much of the Hunter Valley beyond Newcastle.
The ending sounded a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
We had TheCoolTV where I live from 2010 to 2012. I was so bummed when they took it off for the Live Well Network...Which they took off for Antenna TV in 2015...Which they took off for Cozi TV in 2018...If there’s one future oddity it’s gotta be short lived digital subchannels.
It was not the internet that killed the The Box. It was MTV Networks. Yes it appeared to most that The Box was thrown into that deal as a sweetener. But the fact was The Box was a direct competitor to MTV 2 for carriage on local cable, and they were beating them! Local cable companies loved the box. It was considered local programing, which was good pr and also (although not a huge money maker) provided some additional income (to the carriage fees that were paid) as a percentage of request fees when to the local cable company. Local cable companies also weren't all that keen on carrying yet another MTV. So MTV Networks was quite happy to gain ownership of The Box to eliminate it. I worked at the The Box from 1994 to 1999 at their headquarters on South Beach. It was a great place to work!
Yep, that was The Box's downfall.
I remember back in 2000 when I stumbled upon this channel and thought it was the best thing ever. And it was...for the next four months until they replaced it with MTV2. In my area they only carried it on Time Warner Cable in Binghamton for less than a year (June at the earliest since I found a letter in my local paper where somebody complained about Eminem's Real Slim Shady video and mentioned the channel by name). If there's anyone out there sitting on a stack of tapes from the channel, hit me up.
There was also K61CA, "TV-61," in Phoenix, Arizona, which lasted from early 1983 to late 1984. They had a sister low-power station in Flagstaff ("TV-9") that was all music videos too.
Great episode...thoroughly enjoyed learning about these MTV competitors, glad to have contributed that WHT promo and nice touch closing it with "New England, the Patriots and We" from V-66, which also turned up on MTV. Oh, and the clam chowder pic made me laugh AND made me hungry!
Great video by the way I recomend checking out the movie uhf it’s basically weird al owning his own uhf tv station it’s great
Also K L A K needs its own UHF tv station for music videos
Pretty sure Channel 31 in Sioux Falls might be KLAK...
among all those, I only knew TMZ.
Funny to note, this music video channel craze was worldwide during the 80-90.
In France, we had TV6 that aired during 87 for few months, only in Paris. And bankrupted.
From its rumbles, in the 90, in cable and satellite MCM was funded to compete with MTV in its own turf.
MCM is now available in the main numeric broadcast.
High school, mid to late 90s, The Box aired on channel 58 in Salt Lake City Utah. Constantly watched at home and at friends houses, even though we had a big satellite dish at home to watch everything from everywhere.
Any one else remeber Watching the Box when Ice Ice Baby first came out and it was literally played non-stop for like 2 hours.
I vaguely remember the Box. I can't remember what channel but remember finding it and clicking on videos I liked. I don't think I watched it much, by then I wasn't watching videos much. We had a channel that played nothing but videos the summer of 1984 in Chicago on channel 66. I found this because my parents blocked MTV and I found it by clicking around. That fall it became a syndication channel that played older shows and in 1994 or 1995 it flipped to Spanish which it is today. I always watched MV60 and they always had contests. Channel 60 went to 50 and is still around but no videos.
Ahhh yes, The Box...for us, it was UHF Channel 38 for the LONGEST time. Always found it on my grandmother's TV in the day. Such fond memories of requesting my favorite song at the time, 'I missed the Bus' from Kriss Kross, & seeing it play over the air, despite being low frequency, & then going to visit her a month later & have her AND my mom chew me out over the phone bill for the said request, & the times I called TO request it. Fun times indeed.
The Box was what I had, on cable during the late 90's. Used to watch it a lot, even if the same video kept playing 20 times per day.
Fun fact: In my local version, the last video to be played on The Box was Cash Money Millionaires - Project Chick. It switched to MTV2 halfway through.
Also, those low-budget music video channels had some totally kewl aesthetics.
Watching that footage from Jukebox Network is really weirding me out. I feel like I've seen this even though I have no conscious memory of it.
This was interesting, thanks!! I haven't thought of The Box in forever! My cable system (then Cox Cable Omaha) played that part of the time on one of their public-access type channels, which was weird. I remember watching it a lot in summer of 1994. (I was 13 and watching a lot of music videos.)
When two of my friends moved into an apartment together, their brief cable subscription (when one of them refused to pay for it, so they dropped it entirely) had The Box and its then subchannels. We often watched Box Classics and saw all the old rock videos you saw on MTV back in the early days.
Hi Benny, binge watching again Thanks bud as always
In Chicago we had The JUKEBOX Network on channel 13. I remember getting in trouble when I was a kid because I ordered like 20 songs in a week. they were something like $2.99 a song i think.... Most of them were "Ghetto Bastard" by Naughty by Nature, that was my favorite song back then and still is one of my favorites. Also "Everything About You" By Ugly Kid Joe and Bad Boys by Inner Circle. My gramma had the phone bill all laid out on the table when I got home from school. I had a dumb look on my face because I didn't know that it actually showed up on the bill. I also loved the fact that you could actually see the numbers appear on the actual TV screen as you typed in the selection number on the phone.
I remember watching primus music videos for $1.99. on the box. During summer vacation in Florida 😂
The Lakeview area of New Orleans got "The Box" in 1997. Lots of rock videos and Marilyn Manson. It hit the rest of New Orleans in 1998 the demo changed almost immediately. I remember the end of it in December of 2000. All it would play was the same 10 videos over and over.
Man, never have I needed distracting content more. Thanks for another great episode!
Yay, New Archive! Time to pop some popcorn and dive in.
Hey Ben I live in North Carolina and I lovingly remember watching TV 61 as the called. Love that channel and hate it some much when TBN bought it. Glad to see someone talk about it. Love your channel and keep up the good work.
Wow, this was a particularly great one.
I just watched a documentary on Night Flight Plus about V66 "Life on the V, the story of V66" and here Ben is doing local video channels, crazy.
This and the (episode 194) new one about VHS were really great.
I've been watching Oddity Archive for years and I am amazed by the consistency of quality over those years.
I haven’t thought about The Box in a long time. Yes indeed we had it in the UK as I remember me and my sister loved watching it for the music videos of bands that weren’t necessarily as popular as others.
Massachusetts Lady here and I LOVED V-66!!!!
Interesting anectdote (?) about Wometco...if in fact it is the same company that was based in Miami... I went to high school with relatives one of the company's founders.
"BELL OF PENNSYLVANIA WILL BILL YOU", Yeah, And they Did!, LOL. We used to smoke (er...tobacco...) and call this sucka from my garage..Because..Er..boredom and watch (OK, listen...) while working on my bike and car...Ahh. The pre Pandora age!
Awesome idea for a video. I love this kind of content.
Notice, V-66, VJ "David O' Leary"....punning David Lee Roth's,..music video...or Vicea Versa.
And, wow, quite the research. Nice job. Now I know there was a real life Gerry Todd
My brothers, friends and I would request music videos to play on this channel a lot when we were young. It was channel 44 or 46 in Spokane, WA.
Man if TV actually played Mr. Bunghole I wouldn't have cut cable in 2000.
In Argentina, we had our own version of The Box, aired in the two more important cable systems of Buenos Aires (Cablevision and Multicanal, now merged in the first brand), with the same system and the addition of local artists among the international videos. It lasted from 1996 to 2000.
Also, In 2008 there was a revival of this channel called TB Music (The TB presumably means The Box), in the same Cable systems, now with the voting system via SMS. Closed shortly after a year, and was operated by a local production company, responsable of a dozen of SMS Game shows, very popular in the midnight of some OTA and cable channels in these years.
Could be mentioned that MTV Brazil was a UHF channel between 1990 and 2012?
One channel you forgot about was The Tube that was a digital channel that start very early in the digital tv era. I also remember that RTN use to have a show called Retro Jam which would take request and retro music videos.
I recall The BOX on C Band satellite from around 1993 to around 1996 (when we switched to Dish Network). We used to watch it on satellite, and were somewhat annoyed with the cheesy character generated list of videos, phone number, and cost. It was also in the clear - not scrambled with Videocipher, like MTV.
"Tele Tunes" in Denver in the early 90s. Very cool show that played punk and alternative music.
WFBN 66's run was during a transition period when they went from a Pay TV model (called Spectrum IIRC) to a bog standard rerun station. They got bought out/shut down by the other Pay TV channel 44, ON TV.
Haha I used to watch the 60 wpwr music videos and music 66 as well. I remember it fondly. Seeing it after school for channel 60.
I remember watching the Video Jukebox Network and The Box when I was barely a pre-teen! It was on Channel 58 in St. Louis and as you mentioned it was poor quality where I lived but in rural areas it was much better. That was the only time I was exposed to videos such as The Dogs' (Your Mama's On Crack Rock) and heavier stuff like Pantera, which neither MTV or radio would ever play, perhaps for obvious reasons
In the UK
Music Box was a pioneering pan-European 24-hour cable and satellite channel that ran from 29 March 1984 to 30 January 1987, and was operated by Music Box Ltd. It was originally one of three channels along with Prem1ere and The Children's Channel, that formed Thorn EMI's venture into satellite television, as a British version of music channel MTV. Music Box later became part of Virgin Vision, one of Richard Branson's business ventures launched in 1983.
. In 1986, the Yorkshire Television region of the UK's ITV decided to go 24 hours a day, but little cash was invested in that service, and so much of the downtime was filled with a rebroadcast of Music Box. It was the first time that an ITV company regularly broadcast 24 hours. Music Box was originally based in the heart of London, in a building where Virgin Vision and Super Channel were also based, and later gave home to the London offices of CNN International and Cartoon Network. The address during the satellite years was 19-21 Rathbone Place, London.
On 30 January 1987 Super Channel was launched on the same satellite frequency previously used by Music Box on pan-European satellite Eutelsat 1-F1 located at 13° east, replaced during 1987 by Eutelsat 1-F4. For this reason Music Box stopped being a 24-hour TV channel, and Virgin set up Music Box as an independent producer of music programmes, continuing to broadcast its shows until the end of September 1987 for 10 hours a day on Super Channel. From October 1987 until January 1990 it was reduced from 10 hours a day to just a couple of hours a day of music programmes to be produced for Super Channel, with a two-month-long break in late 1988 due to problems related to the sale of Super Channel. Music Box ended its satellite broadcasts in January 1990 with the last pan-European showing of The Power Hour.
I still have a VHS my sister made in the early 80’s of all her favorite music vids that played over U68 here in NYC
WPWR now a My Network TV station owned by Fox Television Stations in Gary, Indiana was channel 60 before it became the current channel 50. It was the first station to become a CW affiliate owned by Fox until 2018. This station is licensed to Gary, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois
Wouldn't have known about the "No More Madonna" song without this intro. Super funny.
KKDJ currently airing music videos as a live streaming channel, it was previously on low power UHF station.
Video jukebox sounds like it’s better then mtv because of the crowd controlling and dirty video aspects (I hate censorship)
Here’s a fun fact for you about the Atlanta station. The center stage theater, whose basement they filmed out of, was famous for being the homebase of world championship wrestling for about 15 years
Oh Benny boy! I love these history lessons type content keep them coming! I don't remember any of these music video shows but one. "Video Hit USA" at the time I lived in Southern California in the Los Angeles area and video hit usa would come on (if i remember correctly) Friday and Saturday nights roughly 86-89 on a local Los Angeles tv station ch.9 KCAL all night till about 5am or so. I'm not sure if they would patch in to it or it was a pre recorded show being that it was from Texas (Of course I didn't know at the time that it came from Texas) I remember on Fridays nights though I would flip my tv back and forth from Friday Night Videos to Hit Video USA. Friday Night Videos on NBC was sure to get play time I on my tv.😁👍
I remember back in the late 90's there was N1: Network One. Its affiliates are low-powered stations, so it's a bit difficult to get reception. It showed music videos that MTV won't air (or sometimes air on 120 Minutes), along with b-movies, amateur documentaries, and Party In Progress.
Up until the early 2010s CHWI-TV in the Windsor, ONT area still aired random music videos (mostly late at night). Counts as UHF!
This is really interesting to see, Ben! Where I live in Maine, there was a thriving UHF scene in the 80's and 90's. In fact, if you didn't have cable, UHF was the only place to receive UPN. Don't know if we have any local music video stations on ours (certainly never saw the Boston ones as am guessing they were low powered), but if we had them? You can bet the would've included puppet and clown VJ's, incoherent segues, the whole shabang!
I never knew there were local 'music video' stations during the 80's. We never had one in Pittsburgh back then. A show that focused on music videos was one thing, but not a local station that aired music videos non stop. So this was something new to me. I did discover V66 on UA-cam, and it blew my mind. I would've LOVED to have a local 'music video' channel, but we never got one. However, I did discover John Garabedian on a syndicated show called 'Open House Party' before that.
It seems pretty coincidental that Univision or Telemundo bought up all the affiliates of the weird non-cable pay TV or "oddball" format over the air stations of the past.
Eugene oregon in the 80s launched a video music channel called laser 25, it played mostly older music videos, it started running shows like the monkees, later it switched to a fox affiliate! Call letters was klsr! Also cmc California music channel is still active! Both over the air and online.
Wow.. SO glad to see V-66 highlighted here.. (well done on the pronunciations, btw, I grew up just north of the edge of the map you used, in Middlesex County)
Sad day when 66 went HSC, though I'm pretty sure by then, we had early cable, and I could sneak watching MTV occasionally.
Funny how similar U68 and V66 were, even what their fates ended up being! I remember discovering channel 68 on the UHF dial when it was already HSN (and before we had cable), the signal wasn't all that great. After U68 folded, Uncle Floyd's show moved to the New Jersey Network (a set of 4 PBS channels in NJ) and WNYC channel 31 had their own music video show in the late 80s/early 90s fondly remembered as the Video Music Box (which I'm seeing somehow snuck into this episode as I'm typing this at 26:20, yes it was from NYC! It was just a music video show, the clip also referenced New York Hot Tracks, another music video show on WABC Channel 7!)