Live 8 - MTV respond to widespread criticism with rebroadcast
Written by Matt   
Thursday, 07 July 2005

The fury of America's Pink Floyd fans was unleashed last Saturday night, when the band's set at the London Live 8 concert was cut short part-way through Comfortably Numb, by MTV, who were broadcasting the event. This typified their coverage of all the concerts, where many of the artists suffered at the hands of the MTV editors.

In an effort to make amends, they have today announced that MTV and VH1 will collectively air tomorrow, July 9th, 10 consecutive hours of commercial-free musical performances from the Live 8 concerts that took place on July 2nd.

VH1 will kick off the first five hours of "Live 8: A Concert to Make Poverty History" from 10am-3pm ET/PT. MTV will take over with an additional five hours, beginning at 3pm ET/PT through 8pm ET/PT.

"Live 8 was a wonderful, peaceful, global and epic event involving over 150 musical acts playing their hearts out for the noble cause of eradicating poverty worldwide," said Van Toffler, MTVN Music Group President. "At MTV and VH1, we're in a constant and candid dialogue with our audience. In the wake of our coverage last Saturday, our viewers have resoundingly told us on-line they want to see full performances from their favorite artists. As a result of viewer demand and thanks to the Live 8 organizers and performers, MTV & VH1 will air 10 consecutive hours from one of the most important musical events of our time."

Additionally, showing tonight, July 8th at 9pm ET/PT, MTV will air a half-hour news special titled "Live 8: Next Steps," which will include news packages about the concerts, the G8 Summit and more. The special will repeat on MTV following the 5-hour music block on Saturday, July 9th, at 8pm ET/PT.

VH1's and MTV's presentations will differ somewhat, with each network airing those performances that best fit the interests of their audiences. For example, both channels will air performances from U2, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and Sir Paul McCartney, with VH1 airing Rob Thomas, Sting, Dave Matthews Band, and Maroon 5 exclusively and MTV airing Linkin Park & Jay Z, The Killers, Kanye West and Green Day exclusively. A full rundown for each network was announced as being available on their respective websites, mtv.com and vh1.com, today (Friday) but at time of writing, details are either non-existant or sketchy at best.