The Flashback : The Other Music Channel

Posted on May 23, 2019

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The Lookback 

     Ted Turner was on somewhat of a golden touch streak with WTBS Atlanta being made into one of the first cable channels, showing that basic cable channels were just former non affiliated stations 4.without the FCC lisence. He later started the first cable news network, called Cable News Network and a second one called Headline news. Our story takes us to 1984. 

    MTV (or Music Television) had launched in 1981 and had taken the television cable world by storm.  For every i-pod there was the Zune so for MTV there was going to be a competitor.  It’s not like others didn’t start jumping into the compete with MTV game in the first place  You had TNN : The Nashville Network (now co-owned with MTV as the Paramount Network)  which was the country music television network not to be confused with CMT the Country Music Television network. Which like TNN launched in 1983, and is now also co-owned with MTV.  
   Ted Turner wanted the big prize, to compete with MTV head on like two top-40 stations on the FM dial fighting for supremacy even they both lose to the AC station but that’s not important.  So this enters the Cable Music Channel or CMC for shot.  Cable Music Channel was not going to be like MTV completely.      
        CMC was going to have the Disc Jockeys not be video Jockeys meaning you won’t be seeing them on the air, they were going to do that thing you hear on the radio, more music less talk. Also less commercials than MTV.  They were also going to have artists that aren’t featured on MTV like Dolly Parton and Diana Ross.  MTV networks did get a little nervous and they announced the launch of VH1 which was like AC radio on TV for 1985.  Turner was also trying to get around the powerful exclusivity that MTV had gained at the time with music videos.  
           MTV did have people who didn’t like it for it’s content and Mr.Turner had their back he wanted CMC to be more “wholesome” compared to MTV.  MTV was pretty tame back then mostly they had strict guidelines too but whatever makes CMC look it works.   He said they were not going to excessively violent, woman degrading stuff that MTV airs.

             So Cable Music Channel launched on October 26th 1984 , remember that date there will be quiz.  After Ted Turner hid the big red button the channel started.   It had computer generated graphic design that was probably very innovative in its day but doesn’t look amazing today because we have better tech or something.  It also had two DJ introduce the channel over the graphics (again out of vision)    Their first music video was Randy Newman’s “I love LA”, the channel was based in LA not in Ted Turner’s Atlanta.  Then they aired Olympia from Sergio Mendes.

     The first commercial was from Double mint gum.

           It was basic music channel.   CMC died. I mean died quickly, it’s final broadcast date was November  30th 1984.  Now it wasn’t because it had no viewers. Some Cable Companies didn’t want to or couldn’t air it, MTV had a lot of exclusives that CMC couldn’t access. It’s not like radio stations with the same format in the same market able to air the same artists at all.  So it was sold to Warner-Amex who owned MTV.   The space was used to help launch VH1, the channel Warner was planning to use to compete against CMC.  Also, ironic that all of Ted’s channels would end up being owned by Warner in 1996.

      With that life span it’s hard to predict if CMC would have been the MTV killer at least on par with it. It’s seemed like a good idea that just didn’t have the money for it to be well. We might have had people who would have CMC people and others being MTV people. It’s hard to tell.

  That ends this post, yeah there’s big story there’s no fall apart, there’s no MTV and Ted Turner going to court it just a short lived network that existed. 

 That’s our look back, tune in next time when we launch our own music channel , then lose money because it’s not 1984 anymore.

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