Steven Lawrence, WorldLink TV

Interview by Sean Barlow

New York City,2002

Afropop Worldwide is a promotional partner with WorldLink TV and has consulted with WLTV's music staff from their launch in December 1999. Georges Collinet is the voice of the daily music blocks. We think that WorldLink TV is a unique and valuable service--especially in the momentous era of US-international relations we are living through--that complements beautifully what Afropop Worldwide does on radio and on the web. So we are happy that WLTV viewers and APWW listeners are finding out about our sister services. Afropop's Sean Barlow talked to Steven Lawrence, WorldLink TV's Director of Music Programming to find out more about the philosophy and practice of WLTV.

Sean Barlow: What is WorldLink TV?
Steven Lawrence: WorldLink TV is a 24-hour non-commercial satellite TV channel, which provides Americans with a global perspective on news, culture and critical social issues like human rights, the environment and globalization. It's available as a basic service on DirecTV and The Dish Network, and currently reaches over 18 million households. The channel launched in December, 1999.

SB: What, in brief, is your story? What led you to become WorldLink TV's Music Director?
SL: Since I was a teenager my two great passions have been film and music. In my 20's I split my time between media activism - developing the cable TV public access channels for Manhattan Cable TV - video art work, and documentary filmmaking, some of which focused on the emerging New York punk music scene of the 70's. Through the latter a friend recommended me to MTV. I was hired as a producer/director a few months before they launched, but soon became disenchanted with making documentaries and entertainment programs about whichever rock star was important at the moment. Hungry for music with more substance, I began to learn about African and Latino music, then used a magazine show I was producing to introduce viewers to artists like Fela Kuti, Ruben Blades, and some of the early hip hop groups like Run-DMC. Then I became fascinated with the Soviet underground rock scene and, after months of lobbying, was given enough money to make a film about it called "Tell Tchaikovsky The News." It was the first serious longform documentary on MTV and was very well received, but it made management aware I wasn't going in the same direction they were. Soon after the broadcast I was fired. I went on to form my own production company and do several film and TV projects in Russia, including a documentary about Boris Grebenshikov, and then a series for PBS called "Vis à Vis," which is about people from different parts of the world meeting each other through digital video links. When WorldLink was ramping up in the fall of `99, I had the idea of collecting all the best World Music videos and broadcasting them here. Of course I had no idea how many good ones existed, but I jumped in and started the research. We launched with 65; today we have over 400 in our library.

SB: What is your programming philosophy for the music and music films on WorldLink?
SL: I suppose the best way of putting it is that we try to be as inclusive as possible and program anything that really moves us. One guideline is that the music should have a clear connection to the culture it comes from and not be primarily imitative of Western pop music. So we program everything from traditional roots music, including American genres that don't get much TV play (bluegrass, Cajun, etc.), to almost all the artists Afropop Worldwide listeners know from African and the Latin countries, to hip hop from Turkey and South Pacific reggae. Of course the videos must be effective at putting across the songs, which creates an interesting quandary for us when a video does not do a good job of representing the artist and the song. If the music is powerful and the video passable, we will often play it, but it's truly upsetting when a glorious piece of music is undermined by an artistically tone-deaf visual treatment.

SB: You must get hundreds of music videos submitted for airplay. What makes an exceptional music video that you want to put on air? What makes you reject videos?
SL: A successful video is one that invites the viewer into the world of the song and the artist through the imaginative use of visuals. There are no rules. We've seen effective videos that cost $ 500 (there's a great one by The Night Losers from Romania) and ones that must cost $ 100,000 or more. Probably the majority have a story line, but that's not always what works best Sometimes artful documentation of a great live performance is all that's needed. And then there are completely unexpected clips, like one called "God Is God," by Juno Reactor that takes excerpts from an art film called "The Color of Pomegranites" made by Russian director Sergei Parajanov in `69, and creates a mesmerizing, surreal world of its own (and this thought applies to many of the Indian videos we show, produced with an almost psychedelic intensity).

The bottom line is that the video should serve the artist and the song well, move us in some way, and make us want to know more about the artist, and hopefully, where he or she comes from. We almost always reject videos that are formulaic and imitative, and look like they belong on some local pop music TV channel. Of course a group like Los Amigos Invisibles loves to lampoon these videos - and we're delighted to play their work!

SB: Relate your experience from the early days of MTV to the relatively early days of world music videos. Parallels? Differences? Lessons learned?
SL: When MTV started there were a limited number of videos available. I think the channel launched with about 100, but with the exception of David Bowie and a few others - mostly from England - the work was not very interesting. However the record labels quickly realized they could increase sales if they could create exciting clips for their artists, and making videos quickly became mandatory, at least from the label perspective.

The same motivation does not yet exist for World Music videos aimed at an American audience, though we're seeing clear evidence that when WorldLink viewers are exposed to great videos, they are motivated to buy CD's. We get a constant stream of emails from viewers asking where they can buy the work of artists as varied as Uzbekistan's Sevara Nazarhan and Romania's Night Losers, and through our web site we link viewers to CDNow, where the majority of the albums are available. At this point, CDNow is getting about 200 visits a week from our audience (all our playlists are available on our website: www.worldlinktv.org) . Good videos can be made for as little as a few thousand dollars - what's essential is imagination and filmmaking talent, not a big budget. We're trying to convince record labels to make that investment and to take advantage of what WorldLink has to offer - access to 18 million U.S. households via a channel that's quickly building an audience for World Music. What's disappointing is how often we hear a great new album and then learn there will be no video.

One reason it's hard to draw parallels between the early days of MTV and the current state of World Music video, is that we're dealing with such a broad range of artists and countries, and the corresponding markets and economies. In Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and France, for example, there are hundreds of sophisticated music videos made every year because the market exists for them. And in India you have an enormous pool of filmmaking talent from Bollywood that gets involved in the production of music clips . The videos that we get from Western and Central Africa are usually paid for and made by Europeans, but there are several wonderful emerging African film directors. I hope they'll want to make videos for their favorite musicians.

SB: What kind of feedback are you getting from viewers? What artists or musical styles get the biggest response?
SL: There's been enormous enthusiasm from our viewers for the World Music video blocks and performance documentaries. We get dozens of emails from them expressing thanks and telling us how much the programming helps expose them to new work and to open the door to other cultures and traditions. They may have heard some "World Music" before, but seeing it seems to have greater impact. When you get a message from a grandmother in rural Arkansas telling you her favorite group is now Amadou and Mariam, or from a 15 year-old who has stopped watching MTV because our video blocks are taking her to new and exciting places, you realize there is a growing interest in music and culture from around the world. The Internet has no geographic borders, and I believe that as a result, people in their teens and 20's feel themselves to be more globally oriented and connected than any previous generation.

I can't say any particular genre gets a bigger response than any other - it's really dependent on the artists and their videos. Natasha Atlas and Sevara Nazarhan, for example, have generated a lot of emails, perhaps because they've both made a lot of very engaging clips that respectively use interesting Egyptian and Uzbekistani locations.

SB: How would you characterize the audience in terms of conventional demographics and lifestyle psychographics?
SL: 55% of all satellite TV subscribers are in urban and suburban communities, and 68% of our viewers are concentrated in these areas (the rest being in rural communities) What we know from research is that 62% of satellite subscribers are interested in learning more about global perspectives and world cultures, and 50% of them are specifically interested in World Music programming. Over 1.3 million adults in over 695,000 homes watch more than one hour of WorldLink every week.

Satellite TV subscribers are wealthier than the average U.S. households. 27% of the households have incomes of $ 60,000 or higher. 81% are married, 62% have home internet access and 40% have bought products online. I can't describe the typical WorldLink viewer, but the majority is evidently well-educated, middle-class, technologically plugged in and clearly interested in what's happening outside America's borders.

SB: Given the resources, how would you like to grow the musical offerings on WorldLink TV?
SL: We'd like to have a weekly World Music magazine that takes viewers inside the music and tells them what's new. That will require corporate underwriting - as on public television and radio - which is the next step we need to take. With more financing we'd also develop other series - for example, one on dance traditions from around the world - and help co-produce films we'd like to see, like one on the new music scene in Monterrey, Mexico. In time, I'm confident we'll attract corporate support for our music and cultural programming and possibly spin off a separate commercial World Music & Culture channel. In the meantime we'll continue to scour the world for the best videos and documentaries. We're actually increasing the number of music films from 15 to 20 now, mostly in response to audience enthusiasm. One other innovation is that our music video blocks are going to be broadcast on the second PBS channels in some major markets. In November WYBE in Philadelphia will be the first when they premier 13 of our best half-hours, so cable viewers in that market will finally have access to WorldLink music programming.

SB: Anything you'd like to add?
SL: Subscribe to DirecTV or The Dish Network so you can watch WorldLink, then become a member by making a contribution. We do pledge drives - like PBS stations - every few months, and offer some terrific premiums, which almost always include our colorful t-shirt and a great world music CD.

SB: How would someone submit material to WLTV for consideration?
SL: Contact Michal Shapiro at
mshapiro@worldlinktv.org