The Now Explosion

The Now Explosion was an early experiment in music video produced in Atlanta, Georgia in 1970. The program was televised in Atlanta on WATL and, later, WTCG-TV (later WTBS-TV, now WPCH-TV).

History

In 1968 and 1969, veteran broadcaster Bob Whitney experimented with a new concept in television programming, in which the hit Top 40 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 in Dallas, Texas, WHBQ-TV Memphis, Tennessee, WKBS-TV Philadelphia and KMBC-TV in Kansas City. 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.

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 in New York played five hours of "The Now Explosion" surrounding telecasts of New York Yankees 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 acquired the program for a television station he recently acquired, WTCG-TV. WATL closed down shortly afterward. While it was unclear whether or not the show contributed to WATL's viewership, it's 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, where Whitney established a new home base. Program segments were produced at Miami Teleproductions in Miami and 2 inch video editing was undertaken at Videotape Associates in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, (now VTA of Atlanta, GA).

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.

Special Effects

The special effects were crude but state of the art for the times. Video shot with heavy, non portable studio camers on large rolling tripods. The recordings were on two inch magnetic tape. The cameras and tape machines cost hundreds of thousands dollars. The editing was simple cut or dissolve.

Common special effects included aiming the camera into a monitor. This was called "video feedback". It created an "infinity" image of the image being fed to the monitor. The image, possibily a dancer, appears to have their image repeated behind them many times and get smaller and smaller as it repeated. If you moved the camera back and forth you could get "trails" on the end of the image.

Then there was the zoom in-out rapidly technique. Other common techniques were using a "mat" and blending images with an electronic video switcher with some basic special effects.

Other images and effects came from an Atlanta, Georgia 1960's style light show called the "Electric Collage". The Electric Collage production company was popular at the major rock concerts and pop festivals. They could do complex special effects with projectors that were not possible in the video technology of the day. The Now Explosion had them do some studio work on a screen while they captured it with a video camera. You can find out about the techniques used in light show at www.electriccollage.com.

Archive recovery

In 2000, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Archives at University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia 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 university archives where the video is stored and is available for public viewing and academic study.

Sources

* 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."

External links

* [http://www.thenowexplosion.net/ The Now Explosion official website]
* [http://www.libs.uga.edu/media/collections/nowexplosion/index.html UGA Walter J. Brown Media Archives]
* [http://www.yubatube.com/NE_EXCERPTS.html Now Explosion Video Excerpts on YouTube.com]
* [http://www.yubatube.com/necredits.html Some Performer Credits]
* [http://electriccollage.com/ Electric Collage light show]