Talk:Video Jukebox Network

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[edit] California

I thought the Box was southern California based. I know it was free in Sacramento.

The BOX was actually started by my father, Steve Peters, in the mid 1980's. When he first started it, it was in Miami only. He did, in fact actually sell it to Viacom.

Could you add more detail then for us? I remember reading an article about it at its peak in the mid 90's. Record companies would sometimes pay to "jack the Box," as it was called, having their employees call in to give their videos exposure. Eventually I think the network just offered packaged deals to record companies to openly promote their videos at specified times. One such video I saw heavily promoted was Vanilla Ice's "Roll 'Em Up" about his love of marijuana. It's safe to say that was the ONLY place I ever heard or saw that song.
The channel also featured the R-rated version of videos, when available. One I remember quite well was Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" which featured a dancer in one of the group scenes who wasn't wearing underwear under her skirt. Scenes featuring the nudity were replaced for MTV, BET and other mainstream outlets, and that more risque version is now quite rare (there are a dozen of the "clean" version on YouTube but nary a hint of the racier one). Other "dirty dancers" that seemed to always be on my local (Philly) channel were Dis-n-dat, Hoes with Attitudes (HWA), and Patra (they even ran a contest for two people to go to Jamaica and attend a Patra concert, and then showed the two schmucks who won hanging at the concert as one of the videos a person could order!)
That one article I read mentioned there were problems with collection, too; with the cable companies not collecting from the phone companies, and thus not paying the network--something like that. It would be nice if someone could document how these systems were set up, what the technology was (I assumed the grainy look of the videos was from the "jukebox" system which I assumed used some kind of digital compression), what the financial problems were, and what its relationship is/was to the UK channel of the same name. Although Wikipedia forbids original research, I think if you know how these worked, you could document them here as an authority. --76.114.195.236 (talk) 00:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)