World Tour

摘要

DURING A RECENT 2O-HOUR flight to Africa, Tom Freston, Viacom's co-president and corporate boss of MTV Networks, had plenty of time for reflection. A screen in the cabin of his corporate jet was showing its flight path over major cities, evoking memories of past trips. In Marrakech, the city in Morocco Fieston had visited 10 times, he found a thriving "Rai" music scene, In Dakar, he'd caught a concert featuring Orchestra Baobob, masters of the Afro-Cuban fusion that was the pop music rage of Senegal in the 1970s. And now it was on to Johannesburg, where Freston would help launch MTV Base, the 100th foreign outpost of the American-born family of cable channels, and something that he had dreamed of for a decade. MTV had arranged a concert for 10,000at a defunct dirve-in theater, mixing African talent such as Seun Anikulapo Kuti, son of Nigeria's late Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, with U.S. exports Ludacris and Will Smith. Even Nelson Mandela, impressed with MTV's global HIV/AJDs campaign, offered his support via taped remarks. Freston beamed, "We were all over the world, except Africa," he said afterward. "It was the missing piece."