RE: mtv europe (was: learn to play website)

["Goddard, Duncan" <goddard.duncan@mtvne.com>]

 >> I worked contract for MTV in NY all through the 90's and recall when Europe was just getting launched.  Kind of a blast to see your corp disclaimer... <<

 

jim- I started here back in 1992, when it was still a toddler- one mtv channel for the whole of europe & africa. launched august 1987. 

 

we started to divide the service by territory for the usual commercial reasons (targeted advertising/airtime sales, then regionalised programming) & launched a whole raft of other viacom channels too, like nickelodeon, paramount, VH-1, MTV-2, showtime & so on, in many different flavours for different countries.

 

most of them play out from london, but there are also now playout centres in milan, berlin & amsterdam, & "franchise" operations all over the eastern bloc countries. 

some of the channels are run in partnership with the local platform operators (e.g. nick & paramount are in partnership with sky in the UK).

 

some of the european channels were originally independents that we bought up & kept their branding as it was (e.g. TMF, viva).

 

most of the european services take quite a bit of US-content & re-version it somehow. there are different broadcast regulations prevalent in different territories, covering such stuff as ad-break structure (number, duration, distance apart), product-placement, certain kinds of content or topics.

 

in any case, the music bed often has to be changed because of rights issues. then the show might have to be re-voiced &/or subtitled after all this post-production. this all assumes that we can get hold of a suitable "kit of parts" from NY, as opposed to the finished, mixed US-domestic version of a show. & each channel (each mtv, VH-1, nick, paramount, whatever) has it's own idiosyncratic issues.

 

(& so e.g. I found myself in an audio studio in tel aviv where they were auditioning for the part of the israeli voice-artists for "spongebob". I was there to do due-diligence on the various 3rd parties dealing with nick-israel & discovered that the lead singer of "rockfour", an israeli prog band I like, was up for the title role....)

 

my job, having started off as a shift-based support techie, is now what one might call "business engineering"; I am trying to rationalise these processes & eliminate duplicate effort & resource-wastage. so.... tapeless workflows, shared media libraries, video-over-IP, best-practice video & audio compression techniques, WAN acceleration, this sort of thing.

 

phew!

 

what did you do in NY?

 

duncan.

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