MTV History

MTV formerly called Music Television was launched on August 1, 1981. The purpose of the channel was to play music videos. Mike Nesmith a former member of the Monkees attention had turned to the music video format created a similar TV series called Popclips, this turned out to be the inspiration for MTV.

MTV introduced new UK bands to the USA, really helping their career and get global success, this was a huge platform for artists and became to be the place to get your video played. As a result it grew rapidly in America targeting young people-white, rock acts very maintain

In the first years of MTV there was very few black artists that had there video played on the channel, for example the globally famous Michael Jackson at the time only had limited air time. This cause outcry too many fans and demanded change. They finally struggled to “Break the colour barrier” The CBS Records President Walter Yernikoff announced to take way MTV’s ability to play any of the records songs on the channel, this resulted in action and soon Michael Jackson Billy Jean was regularly played. This helped create a partnership between the channel and black artists. This music video not only broke the race barrier but in turn changed the genre MTV was from pop/rock to more of an RNB feel. This caused more artists like Prince and Janet Jackson to have air time.

The main aim of the channel originally was to play music videos 24/7 by the VJ’s but this disappeared in 2000s but still maintain eight hours of music play a day. The explanation of the channel resulted in bring out 4 in total MTV channels in the UK, this means in total they play 23 hours of videos a day. But due to the technology available today through the use of the internet they have turned their focus to TV series and creating reality programmes. They are trying to change to the social environment around them, but still remaining popular to there fans.