A brief summary of MTV's controversial history
MTV, the music tv channel that now we would not know how to classify and that surely many will be surprised when told that it still exists, was officially launched on Saturday August 1, 1981. After an introduction with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll" it was aired "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, the first music video ever released by MTV. The video was followed by Pat Benatar's “You Better Run" and many, many Rod Stewart videos.
With the appearance of MTV began a story that continues today, but in 1981 specially began the 5 first years of pure madness because the first thing that should be noted is that MTV was a television channel that was created before it even had content to fill it! Because the truth is that in 1981, practically nobody had heard before of music videos.
Obviously, MTV has had a brutal influence on music video culture as we know it today. However, it is to the Beatles where we would have to go back to explain the beginning of music videos. Their films and videos that they began to film and send to televisions to promote their records, make them pioneers in this too. In fact MTV later honored director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, Help) with an award for "basically inventing the music video".
But not even the first years of MTV were without controversy because in the first two no black artists were aired. Despite the massive success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, it was only after the president of CBS records threatened to remove all other CBS videos that the channel agreed to air “Billie Jean” changing the course of MTV by breaking the color barrier and opening up the door for other black artists. However, even after that only a few other black artists would be featured because MTV continued refusing other black artists rather than Michael Jackson, Prince, Eddy Grant, Donna Summer, Joan Armatrading, Musical Youth, the Specials and Herbie Hancock.
For the annals of history remains the famous 1983 interview in which David Bowie forced VJ Mark Goodman to explain why MTV wasn't playing videos by black artists bringing up the music industry's obligation to feature more diverse talent and the importance of keeping young Black viewers in mind.
The music videos that comprised most of MTV's programming in the 1980s were promotional videos that record companies had commissioned for international use, or concert clips from any available sources. But the rapid proliferation of music videos made companies see a lucrative source of income and began to get involved in video creation, collecting high percentages of future royalties from artists. Only by understanding this we can explain the astronomical budgets for videos in which everything was possible and whose overtime was paid with cocaine. An exciting and entertaining world of excesses that even came to the point that Al Gore and his wife formed in 1985 the American committee The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) with the goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes in their lyrics or any graphic content (I bet you are familiar with the “Parental Advisory” stickers on album covers). As a curiosity, the PMRC was founded under the political conservatism of Reagan and was funded by Mike Love from Beach Boys and Joseph Coors from Coors beers. In addition to the lyrics of Prince, Judas Priest, Madonna and many others, it was videos of doubtful taste like the one below by Tom Petty that at that time scandalized the conservative American society.
In the 80s, the channel produced its first MTV Video Music Awards show (VMAs). Then came the MTV Movie & TV Awards, the MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs), the coverage of Live Aid concerts or the MTV Unplugged. On the other hand, MTV also began its annual Spring Break coverage in some sort of harbinger of what the channel would eventually become.
In the 90s, MTV can be held guilty of the success that ended up overwhelming Kurt Cobain. Nirvana led a sweeping transition into the rise of alternative rock and grunge music when MTV started to air their video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" helping to turn the alternative into mainstream and opening the door to artists such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden or Nine Inch Nails. After the Grunge MTV kept on opening to new genres, that's how gangsta rappers like Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Ice Cube Dr. Dre, Nas or Snoop Doggy Dogg started to star in many screen minutes. But it is in the 90s, when the channel began to reduce the broadcast time of music videos in favor of other types of content, which although they had already appeared on the channel at the end of the 80s, it is from 1995 when MTV started to shift its focus to comedy shows such as Jackass.
Before the decade ended, just before the musical content also began to change towards teen pop music inspired by the success of the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC, there was still time to introduce electronic artists such as Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Moby, Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim or Daft Punk.
Since then, and despite later periodic efforts from the channel to reintroduce pop rock with bands like Blink-182, Linkin Park, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Foo Fighter, RHCP, Incubus or Green Day, MTV had progressively reduced its airing of rock music videos, leading to the slogan "Rock is dead". The facts that at the time rock music fans were less materialistic and bought less music based on television suggestion, were meant as the reasons why MTV abandoned its once core music.
The years after, and specially the period from 2005 to 2009 MTV continued its focus on reality shows releasing things such as Laguna Beach, Next, The Hills, My Super Sweet 16, Parental Control, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila and Paris Hilton's My New BFF. In short, 5 years in which MTV dedicated itself with great determination to digging the grave of a channel that marked an entire generation. And well, I guess no more review from what came after is gonna be needed here.
Find the detailed MTV history here and visit MTV’s official website here.
