TMF: The music channel where anything goes got the deathblow from YouTube
Media scholar Jaap Kooijman wrote a book about The Music Factory (TMF), the music channel where VJ's like Sylvana Simons, Bridget Maasland, and Valerio Zeno learned the ropes. Going through the material, Kooijman, he naturally became nostalgic. ‘‘Back then, you still had to turn on the TV to watch a music video.’’
Bridget Maasland, Valerio Zeno, Tooske Ragas and Sylvana Simons; they all started out as VJs (short for video jockey) at The Music Factory (TMF). They competed with the big MTV Europe, targeting young people only, following an idea of former Radio 538 founder Lex Harding. They spoke to international stars, but then became stars themselves. ‘‘Viewers had Hitkrant posters of TMF's VJ's hanging over their beds,’’ said Jaap Kooijman, UvA media scholar and Americanist.
But that's not the whole story surrounding TMF. ‘‘TMF can also tell us a lot about how the media landscape changed greatly in the period from 1995 to 2011. After all, it existed during a pivotal moment in the media landscape,’‘ Kooijman says. ‘‘Sure, you already had commercial television, but we also got digital TV and the rise of online platforms.’’
After giving several lectures on music television, he decided to write a book about it. It is titled: The Music Factory, TMF, and Dutch Pop Culture. Next week he will present the first copy to former TMF VJ Sylvana Simons at the pop venue Melkweg.
How innovative was TMF?
'TMF built on the music television we already knew from MTV and MTV Europe. But what was innovative about the channel was that it offered space for Dutch bands and artists—such as Kane and Anouk—who were hardly ever featured on other European music television channels. Suddenly they started making music videos, too. TMF made that possible. That really gave a boost to Dutch pop music.’’
‘‘The TMF awards also contributed to that. It was a new, massive music festival aimed specifically at young people, where international and Dutch stars stood side by side on the same stage for the first time.’’
TMF focused only on young people, but why?
‘‘For commercial television producers, it is always interesting to focus on a target group that could be of interest to advertisers. They succeeded very well in that. But that also posed a kind of contradiction for TMF. On the one hand, the channel offered room for different Dutch music styles on television, such as gabber music and hip-hop. On the other hand, the viewership is reduced to one target group, suitable for commerce: young people.’’
Young people of the past now often look back on the period when TMF existed with great nostalgia. Why is it that TMF evokes that feeling so strongly in them?
‘‘For many people, this is the television they grew up with. Not for me; I was just too old. But even for me, it was nostalgic to go through all that material. It's television from the '90s, after all. To my mind, that's not that long ago at all, but it is still some 30 years ago now. Back then you still had to turn on a TV to watch a music video, regardless of the Internet or social media. There's something nostalgic about that, too. Now you would just go to YouTube...’’
Was the rise of YouTube the main reason TMF disappeared from the Dutch airwaves?
‘‘There were multiple reasons, but the advent of YouTube did kill music videos on TV. Why would you sit in front of the television waiting for your favorite music video to come on when you can just watch it online with one push of a button?’’
‘‘Channels like TMF and MTV faced a difficult issue at the time. It was clear, especially after the advent of YouTube, that they would not attract enough viewers by just broadcasting music videos. That was made obsolete by technology. So there had to be more differentiation.’’
‘‘By the way, showing music videos was never the main goal for either channel. Their goal was to broadcast programs that would appeal to and engage young people as a target group and bring in advertisers.’’
So MTV and TMF had to change to continue to exist. How did they try to do that?
‘‘MTV then switched mainly to reality TV. TMF, on the other hand, started putting more effort into incorporating interactive elements into their programs, for example, by introducing TMF ID in 2002. This allowed viewers to request songs via text message which were then displayed in a bar at the bottom of the screen and were thus visible to everyone. That's how they wanted to create a TMF community.’’
How important was the role of TMF's VJ's in creating such a ‘TMF community’?
‘‘Very important in the sense that the VJ was the link between the channel and the viewer. One of the reasons TMF was more popular than MTV Europe—three times as many people watched it—was because TMF's VJs were able to appeal to Dutch young people's own perceptions better than those of MTV Europe.’’
‘‘That was partly because they spoke Dutch and were seen as peers who brought foreign stars closer. And also because, people were called by their first names, at least that was the case for women. This included programs like Briget on air (Bridget Maasland, ed.) and Sylvana's Soul (Sylvana Simons, ed.)’’
Yet TMF didn't make it, and MTV did. Why is that?
‘‘The conglomeration under which both MTV and later TMF fell, Viacam, considered MTV more important. True, TMF had become a strong brand, especially through the TMF awards, but a large international company naturally has less of a bond with a national brand. For them, it's simply business.’’
‘‘But the idea of having one original MTV channel that we can broadcast indiscriminately everywhere across the rest of the world, a kind of American global capitalist idea—was definitely out of this world. Programs could be adapted to local tastes. That's what MTV did around that time, and they do to this day. Partly due to the success of TMF.’’
Jaap Kooijman, 'De muziekfabriek, TMF en de Nedelandse popcultuur, (Mazirel Pers, 2024), ISBN: 9789464560527, Prijs: € 20,00
