The Now Explosion
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''The Now Explosion'' was an early experiment in
music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
produced in
Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
in 1970, more than a decade before
MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
was launched. The program was televised in Atlanta on
WATL WATL (channel 36) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with MyNetworkTV. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside NBC affiliate WXIA-TV (channel 11). Both stations share studios at One Monroe Place on the north end ...
-TV and, later, WTCG-TV (now
WPCH-TV WPCH-TV (channel 17), branded on-air as Peachtree TV, is an independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is owned by locally based Gray Television alongside CBS affiliate and company flagship WANF (channel 46), and l ...
).


History

In 1968 and 1969, veteran broadcaster Bob Whitney experimented with a new concept in television programming, in which the hit
Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or " con ...
songs of the day were coupled with the latest in the era's videotaping and filming techniques. The resulting pilot enlisted the studio facilities of several stations:
WFAA-TV WFAA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Dallas, Texas, United States, serving the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as an affiliate of ABC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside Decatur-licensed Estrella TV affiliate KMPX (channel 29) ...
in
Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...
,
WHBQ-TV WHBQ-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, affiliated with the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox network and owned by INSP (TV network), Imagicomm Communications. The station's studios are located on South High ...
Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
,
WKBS-TV WKBS-TV (channel 47) is a religious broadcasting, religious television station in Altoona, Pennsylvania, United States, owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by Cornerstone Television. The station's transmitter is located in Logan Towns ...
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
and
KMBC-TV KMBC-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is owned by Hearst Television alongside CW affiliate KCWE (channel 29). Both stations share studios on Winchester Avenue in the List o ...
in
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
. Location scenes were filmed at station studios or at locations within a short distance from these facilities. Whitney's aim was to create a cost-effective television program that would emulate the success of Top 40 radio, all the way down to the use of an unseen disk jockey. The concept was born about ten years before the arrival of
MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...
. In 1970, ''The Now Explosion'' began its first regular broadcasts on Atlanta's WATL-TV, where it aired 28 hours each weekend. By this time, the show was produced at WATL's studios. Programs were bicycled to stations on 2 inch videotape and played back for extended periods from one to six hours.
WPIX-TV WPIX (channel 11) is a television station in New York City. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, it is operated under a local marketing agreement (LMA) by Nexstar Media Group, making it a ''de facto'' owned-and-operated station and flagship of The CW ...
in New York played five hours of ''The Now Explosion'' surrounding telecasts of
New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...
baseball games in 1970. Stations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Sacramento and Boston had also picked up ''The Now Explosion''. After 13 weeks at WATL,
Ted Turner Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III (born November 19, 1938) is an American entrepreneur, television producer, media proprietor, and philanthropist. He founded the Cable News Network (CNN), the first 24-hour United States cable news, cable news ch ...
contracted to carry the program for a television station he had recently acquired, WTCG-TV. WATL closed down shortly afterward. While it was unclear whether or not the show contributed to WATL's viewership, it has been said by some that many of their viewers only watched WATL for ''The Now Explosion''. The move had also shifted production of ''The Now Explosion'' to
Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...
, where Whitney established a new home production base. Program segments were produced at Miami Teleproductions in Miami and 2 inch video editing was undertaken at Videotape Associates in Ft. Lauderdale (now VTA of Atlanta). After 26 weeks in syndication in early 1971, Whitney cancelled ''The Now Explosion'', when the high costs of production and distribution outpaced the commercial revenue. Turner would once again enter the music video television business with the debut of ''
Night Tracks ''Night Tracks'' is an American television series which ran from 1983 to 1992 on Super Station WTBS (later known as TBS Super Station) on late night weekends. It premiered on Friday, June 3, 1983, and the first music video it aired was "Family ...
'' in 1983 which lasted nine years and
Cable Music Channel The Cable Music Channel (CMC) was a short-lived American basic cable channel that was owned by the Turner Broadcasting System. The all-music video channel was created by Ted Turner and launched in 1984, providing the first national competitio ...
(albeit for only a month) in 1984.


Special effects

The special effects used in ''The Now Explosion'' seem crude in later years but they were state of the art for the early 1970s era. Video was shot with heavy, non portable studio cameras on large rolling tripods. The music videos were recorded on two inch magnetic tape. The video editing required the use of three massive and costly "quad" tape recorders allowing only simple transitions such as cuts and dissolves. Most performers were young amateurs recruited from the Atlanta audience. Many appeared with home-grown costumes - often after midnight when station facilities became available - and were recorded dancing extemporaneously as rock rhythms were piped into an almost bare and darkened studio. The lighting often placed performers "in limbo" so that only the illuminated dancers were seen against darkened studio walls. Extensive special effects were added in post production as images were combined and distorted to form what production people often called "eye candy." Common special effects included aiming the camera into a monitor that said camera is connected to - a technique called "
video feedback Video feedback is the process that starts and continues when a video camera is pointed at its own playback video monitor. The loop delay from camera to display back to camera is at least one video frame time, due to the input and output scanni ...
." The original video and the newly captured pictures from the monitor were combined with a video switcher to create an "infinity" effect as same video repeated itself in a seemingly endless visual loop. Changes in position or angle of the cameras were used to create trails of light which seemed to spill off dancers in a manner interpreted by many as "psychedelic." Producers felt the distorted video of moving bodies, often seeming to float in space, and moving "in tune" to pop songs, created enhanced enjoyment for viewers. Other images and effects came from an Atlanta 1960's style light show venture called the "Electric Collage." The Electric Collage production company was popular at major rock concerts and
rock festival A rock festival is an open-air rock concert featuring many different performers, typically spread over two or three days and having a campsite and other amenities and forms of entertainment provided at the venue. Some festivals are singular even ...
s. The producers of the Electric Collage visual music were able to produce complex lighting effects with projectors that were not possible using the video technology of the day.


Archive recovery

In 2000, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives and
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
s Archives at
University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...
in
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
located and recovered significant amounts of this video which had been stored for 3 decades in south Florida. These segments were remastered to contemporary technical standards by the university archives where the video is stored and is available for public viewing and academic study.


Sources

* ''
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...
'': "Years before MTV, an Atlanta TV show created its own music videos. It was psychedelic. It was far out. It was the. . .'Now Explosion'", August 3, 2000, page F1 * ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'': "Totally Cool Update: Far-out archives unearthed amid 'Now' reunion", March 30, 2001, page E1


External links

*
30 Minute Excerpt Collection Video





Electric Collage light show
{{DEFAULTSORT:Now Explosion Music videos 1970s American music television series 1970 American television series debuts 1971 American television series endings