I Want My MTV, We Want Our TMF: The Music Factory, MTV Europe, and Music Television in the Netherlands, 1995-2011

The Dutch music television channel, The Music Factory (TMF), launched in 1995, 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 young Dutch viewers, and for three years, turned TMF into a text-message-based “interactive” music television channel. In 2011, Viacom discontinued the TMF brand. This article places the relatively short history of TMF within the contexts of the emergence of commercial television in Europe and the shift of music videos from television to other media platforms, as well as broader discussions of globalisation.

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