Nightlife isn't just about the music, it's a lifestyle; and no place captures it better than A3tv - The Nightlife Network. Started as a late night channel on South Beach local TV, A3tv has grown into an interactive web portal covering all aspects of nightlife – music, clubs, design, DJs, personalities, fashion, and style. With a future expansion into New York and the Winter Music Conference coming next month, founder/host/personality Buster gives us the lowdown on what to expect from the channel as well as South Beach nightlife this season.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Where did the idea for A3tv come from?
Buster: I'd been doing media in nightlife for several years back
when I lived in Boston. Then in 1999, I moved to Miami to help start
a nightlife magazine called Ego Trip. The idea of A3 came from when I
originally tried to do a sixty-second club update that got aired a
bunch of times a week. I would sell it to nightclubs and right as I
was about to launch, 9/11 happened and that sort of squashed that
idea. I got the idea that if I could buy sixty seconds, why shouldn't
I buy sixty or seventy hours and develop my own TV channel?
RS: And what does sixty or seventy hours get you on TV?
Buster: We bought 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. every night because our specific
demographic would be more up to stay and watch it because they're
going out or just coming home. We wanted to create a cooler style of
television that had a little bit more of a higher sense of fashion,
style, and music, so A3, the concept for the nightlife network, was
born.
RS: What does A3tv stand for?
Buster: Originally we were on Channel 3 and the entire concept was
meant to be an alternative to regular television, a little bit cooler,
a little bit more music-driven and less insulting to your
intelligence. So we called it originally - Alternative TV3, or A3 for
short. We have since switched to Channel 5.
RS: So you're based in Miami, but I see on the site there's a
click for New York. What are you doing up there?
Buster: We'll be launching New York by the summer and we've already
started shooting up there. We're releasing that information shortly,
but we're very excited about our New York launch and really excited
about being able to focus our development on the web as well because
that's really the future of where we're at. The web gives us a global
reach and we're able to specifically target our viewership. For
example, the Winter Music Conference is obviously our busiest time of
the year. We're on Channel 5 in every single hotel room down here on
the overnight times, we have an entire channel designed around
nightlife. But people don't watch terrestrial television anymore as
it's really going the way of appointment television. Gee, I've got to
get home to watch Friends tonight at 8:30. But with the internet,
Tivo, DVRs, and OnDemand, you can have instant access to whatever
content you want whenever you want. So our entire process now is to
develop not only the terrestrial TV aspects of A3, but the web channel
aspect as well.
RS: Speaking of the Winter Music Conference, do you have any
predictions for this year? What's the big thing going to be or where
do you see it going this year?
Buster: Well it's an interesting thing, we get bigger and bigger
brands down here and it seems like the name of the Winter Music
Conference is a lot more popular and broad-based. It's less about DJs
and the music and more about the parties. Every year there's always
one or two tracks from the Conference that just take off. Most people
will agree that last year was all about Bob Sinclar's "World Hold On."
RS: Of course, it made it two years in a row for Bob – with
"Love Generation" the year before.
Buster: WMC just keeps getting bigger and the crowds keep getting
larger. The Conference itself doesn't seem to be growing much and it
seems to be more about people coming down and experiencing the music,
the time and the energy of it.
This will be my twelfth Winter Music Conference, and as you get older you slow down, going through that decompression from the scene. You don't get to go to as many parties or you don't get to last as long as you used to and every single time somebody in the same position says yes, but it's not like how it used to be, right? But, for anybody coming here for the first time this year to the Winter Music Conference, it's going to be the greatest week of their lives.
