MTV to air 10 hours of concert after complaints

Music channel to show entire Pink Floyd, Coldplay, U2 sets on Saturday

NEW YORK - In the television equivalent of a do-over, the MTV Networks said they would air 10 commercial-free hours of performances Saturday from last weekend's Live 8 concerts.

Viewers will be able to see the entire sets of U2, Coldplay, Pink Floyd, Kanye West and Green Day on either MTV or VH1, and sometimes both, Van Toffler, president of the MTV Networks Music Group, said Friday.

MTV took a critical whipping and received complaints from more than 2,000 viewers about their eight hours of Live 8 coverage on July 2. Between commercials, interviews and reports from correspondents, MTV often showed only a song or two from several of the performances.

Toffler said the list of performers at each concert, held in 10 different cities, kept growing in the days leading up to the show — partly because MTV was helping organizers book acts.

"It just got bigger and bigger and we couldn't accommodate them all," he said.

At the same time, MTV had made a commitment to organizers to explain the purpose behind the concerts, and many artists wanted to be interviewed about their reasons for being there, he said. MTV's telecast stood in contrast to America Online, which offered most of the performances in their entirety.

Many of MTV's viewers weren't even alive when Pink Floyd broke up, so Toffler said he was surprised at how many wanted to see the band's reunion performance in full.

As the complaints flooded in, Toffler said he contacted Live 8 organizers on Wednesday to see if some of the performances could be rerun.