a lot of people were pissed at mtv's coverage of the live 8 concerts last weekend. mtv would air a couple songs from a performance, then the vjs would chatter for awhile, then they'd move on to something else. it was pretty pathetic.

that was definitely the consensus view in my house, where my sister tried to watch some of the concert. and apparently quite a few others felt the same and let mtv know pretty emphaticly, because this saturday they'll be trying over, airing 10 hours of live 8 performances:

MTV and VH1 will each offer five hours of uninterrupted performance footage with differing artist lineups on Saturday. VH1 will air its Live 8 highlights from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, while MTV's batch of highlights will roll out from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

"At MTV and VH1, we're in a constant and candid dialogue with our audience, and in the wake of the live events last Saturday, our viewers have resoundingly told us online they want to see full-set performances from their favorite artists," MTV Networks Music Group President Van Toffler said of the move.

the performance i wanted to see was björk, and it looks like i could be in luck:

The complete MTV broadcast will include performances by: Paul McCartney & U2, U2, Coldplay, Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child, Green Day, Dido & Youssou N'Dour, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, R.E.M., Snoop Dogg, Orchestra Baobab, Madonna, Linkin Park, Linkin Park & Jay-Z, the Killers, Björk, Good Charlotte, Malaika, Audioslave, Mariah Carey, Robbie Williams, the Who, Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney.

The complete VH1 broadcast will include performances by: Paul McCartney & U2, U2, Coldplay, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Will Smith, Annie Lennox, Keane, Dave Matthews Band, Orchestra Baobab, Madonna, Maroon 5, Joss Stone, Velvet Revolver, Sting, Rob Thomas, Mariah Carey, Robbie Williams, the Who, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney.

but when will she play? no schedule is listed, and i don't know if i want to watch all 5 hours of mtv coverage just to catch björk, although that might be the only way to see it on tv (rather than wait for it to show up on bittorrent, etc). mtv hasn't even updated the tv schedule on their website let alone tivo listing data; hopefully that will be fixed soon.¶

yeah, that's a little weird, not releasing a schedule of performers for the patter-free rebroadcasts. i mean, i can understand if there were commercials - it would be in mtv's best interest to get as many people to watch for as long as they can - but at least tell us when the good people are performing, eh?

i guess tivo or other form of dvr would be your friend in cases like this.

there must have been some sort of uninterrupted feed broadcast somewhere in the world, because i've seen full performance audio and video from live8 on winmx (and i've been listening to the pink floyd reunion nonstop as a result) and slsk. surely torrents exist as well... ¶

apparently aolmusic.com had much better coverage, with full-length sets... but only from 6 cities, from what i could tell. no sets from the tokyo show, for example, so no björk. ¶

i just got back from my saturday errands... i saw the end of destiny's child and now green day is on, so i suspect the performances will air in the order in which they were listed in the mtv article. although the schedule info never got corrected. ¶

i guess they were going in sequence. robbie williams was just on, and right now the who were let out of their wheelchairs long enough to play a couple of their warhorses, so i guess i missed bjork. damn it. ¶