Welcome to the Box, the interactive music-video channel that lets you pick what it plays. The 10-year-old service is an extra-Spicy alternative to industry mainstays like MTV and Black Entertainment Television, serving heavy courses of the toughest gangsta rap, cutting-edge alternative rock from groups like Danzig, and raunchy “booty videos” like Campbell’s. While the Box is a relatively small operation, its influence goes well beyond its revenues of about $21 million. Record companies queue up to place their videos on the network, largely because the channel has a reputation for launching some of the $10 billion music industry’s newest stars, from R. Kelly and Mary J. Blige to Toni Braxton. Last year rap act Bone Thugs-N-Harmony sold 1.5 million albums seemingly overnight after a debut on the Box.
Yet while the Box has been a good bet for the record companies, the video channel is playing games with its viewers. The Box likes to tout its status as a video jukebox where viewers decide-by choosing from an on-screen menu–what gets on the air. (The network’s slogan is “Music Television You Control.”) But there’s strong evidence that the record labels, by making their own phone calls to the Box, are behind many of the video requestsa practice referred to by some as “jackin’ the Box.” Meanwhile, the channel has sought to take advantage of it by peddling air time directly, a fact not widely known outside the music business. About a year ago, “they came up with an idea called ‘playola’” said Sean Fernald, director of video promotion at Relativity Recordings and chairman of the Music Video Association, the industry trade group. “Instead of paying someone else to call up your videos, you give the money to them.”
All the parties deny that viewers are being deceived. But no one disputes what’s at stake. If the record companies can get a video on the air more frequently, it helps create the image of a “hot” artist. That, in theory, helps fuel more record sales. Jackin’ the Box is “very big, all-pervasive,” contends Tommy Boy Records chief Tommy Silverman, whose acts include rappers Naughty by Nature.
Until the last couple of years or so, few record-industry officials cared much about the Box. Launched in Miami in 1985 by Video Jukebox Network Inc., the service began as part of an interactive-TV test project on cable. Its first videos were standard MTV fare like Madonna and Prince. From the beginning, the Box struggled. It overexpanded and always needed cash; some cable systems (lumped it and many customers didn’t pay up. “There were fears we weren’t going to make it,” says Les Garland, the Box’s executive vice president. Garland, a former record executive who helped start up MTV, joined the Box in 1990. He helped hone the Box’s focus on upstart acts, hard-edged rock and street music, and drummed up support aynong his pals in the music business. Before long, the Box made its mark. Garland says it aired the first of a string of unknown acts -the white rapper Vanilla lee -who became stars.
These days, the Box adds about 30 new videos a week to its lineup-many from new artists and some that other major channels wouldn’t dare broadcast. For example: only the Box plays racy rapper Sir Mix-A Lot’s “Put ‘Em on the Glass,” which features buxom women pressing their breasts against car windows. Some labels produce two videos for the same song, a hard-core clip for Box play and a soft-core clip for MTV and others. What makes the Box so successful–and attractive to record companies-is its direct access to viewers, whose video picks help industry executives decide which performers will become stars. The channel operates more than 160 video jukeboxes around the country, which store as many as 300 videos. The viewer chooses a video from an on-screen menu and orders it using a 900 number. In about 20 minutes the video pops onto the TV screen and the fee of between $2 and $3 is charged to the viewer’s phone bill. Last year more than 6 million viewers dialed up videos.
As the channel has grown more successful, industry executives say record companies have figured out how to try to manipulate the system and jump-start the prospects for new acts. For example; certain record companies hire teams of callers to dial up videos. “So many labels are doing it that if you don’t do it you don’t get a legitimate count for your video,” says Tommy Boy’s Silverman. Kenneth Matthews, director of video production for Uptown Records, allows: “I will call my video 20 times a day.” Uptown’s roster includes Mary J. Blige, Jodeci and Heavy D.
Many of the record companies with big hits on the Box deny making such calls. These companies, including Jive (R. Kelly) and Relativity Recordings (Dr. Dre and Ed Lover), say jackin’ the Box isn’t worth it; a phone bill can easily top $10,000. “I don’t think jackin’ the Box generates record sales,” said Def Jam’s Rhonda Cowan. But labels accuse each other of cheating. Furthermore, Tommy Boy’s Silverman thinks the calls make a clear difference. “Anything in the top five is legitimate,” he says. “Below that, 1 can make a 10th-place video a No. 5 with a calling team.” The Box knows what the record companies are doing but it denies they can manipulate the rankings. “The number of calls from the labels compared to those from the viewers is a nonissue. They aren’t doing it enough to impact anything,” says Garland.
But Box executives freely admit to pushing “playola” promotional campaigns that allow record companies to affect airtime-for a price. One package, unveiled last year, offers on-air ads for a label’s latest video in the Box’s lineup, six daily ads for its act and three guaranteed video plays, spread over two weeks. The Box will run only 12 guaranteed videos a day, and it announces each as a “paid presentation” from record companies, says Garland. “We obviously want to protect our franchise.” Record executives say these “promotional” packages can run as high as $27,000. At that price, “it’s more effective to hire others to call in” video requests, says Relativity’s Fernald.
A second Box marketing plan ,allows record labels to buy VIP cards entitling the holder to dial up videos for free. Garland says labels can distribute the cards as a promotion to their customers. Matthews, Uptown’s video production chief, says his label acquired $10,000 of the cards for a video for one of its new acts a few months ago. “We handed them out to our interns,” he says. “We wanted to get the group visible.” They failed, but the label is gearing up to try again tobacka video for another promising new group, Soul for Real. “Once you have momentum, you have to keep it going,” Matthews says. “I don’t know if that’s ethical, but it’s business.”
It isn’t clear what steps the record companies will take to stop the Box from selling time for their videos, or that they even want to. Many executives claim they’re not going along with the scheme, but the high price seems to be the main reason they are balking. As for the Box, its short-term success is ensured. It has savvy investors like Island Records chief Chris Blackwell and media dealmaker J. Patrick Michaels Jr., and there are plans for a bigger push overseas. But for a business built on the slogan “Music Television You Control,” the question is what will happen when viewers discover how little control they really have.
