I Want My MTV, We Want Our TMF

Abstract

Launched in 1995, the Dutch music television channel The Music Factory (TMF) presented a local alternative to MTV Europe, owned by the US-based conglomerate Viacom. In 2001, Viacom took over TMF, which by then proved to be far more popular than MTV Europe among the Dutch young viewers. Ten years later, Viacom discontinued the TMF brand. This article places the relatively short history of TMF within the contexts of American and globalization, the expansion of European television from nationally based public broadcasters to commercial pan-European television networks, and the shift from television to other media platforms as the dominant form of distributing music videos.