We Wanted Our MTV!

This episode discusses MTV impacted how music was made, consumed, and marketed.  Artists were forced to consider their visual brand as well as their music, while record companies poured hundreds of thousands — and later, millions — of dollars into videos. A glaring problem for MTV in its first two years was its refusal to play videos by African American artists, arguing that their music was not “rock.” Michael Jackson changed that, whether MTV wanted to change or not.