The Now Explosion: Music Video TV Show
Ten Years Before MTV and VH1

In 1968 and 1969, broadcaster Bob Whitney experimented with then novel television production techniques by renting studio facilities in major US cities and recording sample modules synchronized to popular records.

Whitney was attempting to create a cost effective video product that would emulate the success of top forty radio. By creating a library of videotaped popular records - each accompanied by a synchronized video, programs could be assembled later by a video disk jockey for broadcast.

The program's production style featured video special effects generated in tempo to top forty records which were repeated over extended periods in the same way musical selections were characteristically rotated in 1960's top forty radio.

In 1970, a resulting marathon TV program, named The Now Explosion, aired all weekend each week on Channel 36 in Atlanta, Georgia. Local Atlanta musical talent and young dancers were featured in the program which was later picked up by stations in major US cities.

The concept has been described by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution* as music video ten years before MTV or VH1. (*Two feature Articles in AJC cited below.) Stations could run the program for any length of time enabling them to fill large blocks with low cost potentially popular programming that might attract a new, young audience.
Programs were bicycled to stations on 2 inch videotape and played back for extended periods from one to six hours. WPIX-TV in New York played five hours of The Now Explosion surrounding telecasts of New York Yankees baseball games in 1970.

After an original 13 weeks on channel 36 in Atlanta, Ted Turner acquired the program for his Atlanta station, Channel 17, and for his TV station in Charlotte, NC. The Now Explosion was then syndicated nationally and was broadcast in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston and New York and other cities. It lasted 26 weeks until it was forced to shutdown when commercial revenue did not match the high production and distribution costs in spite of high ratings.

In 2000, the University of Georgia Media Archives** located and recovered significant amounts of this video which had been stored for 3 1/2 decades in south Florida. These segments were remastered to contemporary technical standards by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at UGA in Athens, GA, where the video is stored and is available for public viewing or academic study.

Former members of the original Now Explosion production group maintain a website:
http://www.thenowexplosion.net.
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CITATIONS:

*ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION ARTICLES Dates: August 3, 2000 - Page Number: F1 Word Count: 1957. Title: "Years before MTV, an Atlanta TV show created its own music videos. It was psychedelic. It was far out. It was the. . .'Now Explosion' "

Feature followup AJC article: March 30, 2001 - Page Number: E1 Word Count: 624.
Title: "TOTALLY COOL UPDATE: Far-out archives unearthed amid 'Now' reunion."

NOW EXPLOSION WEBSITE: http://www.thenowexplosion.net

**UGA MEDIA ARCHIVES WEBSITE: http://www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/other/