The Rise and Fall and Future of the Music Video - Part 1

Summary

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The Rise and Fall and Future of the Music Video – Part 1

Ongoing History of New Music with Alan Cross
Release Date: February 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this rich, fast-paced episode, legendary music historian Alan Cross dives into the evolution of the music video—exploring its origins, explosive rise with MTV and MuchMusic, and the immense cultural impact of the form. Cross traces the music video’s transformation from a curious experiment to a global force shaping not just music, but fashion, language, gender conversations, and Western cultural hegemony. This is part one of a two-part exploration, ending as the golden era of music videos gives way to the digital shakeup.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Pre-MTV Roots of Visual Music (00:52–13:12)

• From Audio to Visual:
  Cross underscores that, prior to the 1970s, music was “something you listened for”—on records or the radio. The visual element was secondary at best.
• Early Experiments:
  • Oskar Fischinger’s “Study Number Five” (1920s–30s): Early pairings of abstract film with music; seen as “magic” then, primitive now.
    • [03:41] Alan Cross: “The guy who really invented the music video was a dude named Oskar Fischinger.”
  • Soundies and Panoram Machines (1940s): Film jukeboxes playing musical performances—precursor to music videos.
  • Scope-A-Tone & Jukebox Films (1960s): Video jukeboxes like the French Scopitone, with exclusive short films—featuring artists like Nancy Sinatra and Procol Harum.
    • [07:54] Alan Cross: “Scope A tones were surprisingly popular for a while. Even at the price of $3,500, which is about $35,000 today.”
• British Innovation:
  The Beatles, exhausted by performing live for TV, pioneered the “promotional film” to send to TV stations worldwide—early music videos for songs like “We Can Work It Out” and “Day Tripper” (1965).
  • [09:23] Alan Cross: “What if there was a way to appear on TV without having to appear on TV?”

2. The Leap to Modern Music Videos (13:12–18:17)

• Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975): The Game-Changer
  • Regarded as the first true modern music video for being conceptual, filmed on videotape, and intended as a video event.
  • [13:12] Alan Cross: “Bohemian Rhapsody is credited as being the first modern music video. And here’s why... it was a conceptual piece, not just another film of a band playing the song.”
  • Production cost: $3,500; shot in 3 hours.
• David Bowie’s Surreal Innovation (1980):
  • Featuring Bowie as various characters, with new video effects and fashion-forward visuals; pivotal in defining the New Romantic movement.
  • [14:43] Alan Cross: “Bowie’s surreal but very fashionable clown character helped jumpstart the whole new romantic movement of the early 1980s.”

3. The MTV Revolution (18:17–25:36)

• Birth of MTV (1981):
  • Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment launches MTV after skepticism from industry insiders.
  • [19:42] Alan Cross: “At one minute after midnight on that summer night, August 1, 1981, John Lack read the introduction.... ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.’”
• First Videos & the Feedback Loop:
  • “Video Killed the Radio Star” (The Buggles) opened; followed by Pat Benatar, April Wine, Iron Maiden, and The Ramones.
  • MTV started with about 250 videos—many by Rod Stewart!
  • Direct, measurable impact on record sales led labels to prioritize and budget for video production.
  • [21:37] Alan Cross: “There was a direct connection between showing a video on MTV and a dramatic increase in sales for that record.”
• Visuals Trump Talent?
  • Suddenly artists’ looks mattered as much (or more) than the music.
  • [22:22] Alan Cross: “Before the music video, rock stars were always distant, unknowable and mysterious... the music video changed all that.”

4. Cultural Expansion and Controversy (23:11–27:05)

• Duran Duran and the British Invasion:
  • EMI’s investment in flashy Duran Duran videos pays off; MTV helps propagate British bands across America.
  • [23:11] Alan Cross: “With 'Rio', an early MTV favorite, the industry knew they were onto something.”
• Iconic "I Want My MTV" Campaign:
  • High-profile artists urge audiences to demand the channel.
  • [24:22] David Bowie: “I want my MTV, all right. I want my MTV.”
  • [24:44] Alan Cross: “How effective was that campaign? It was off the charts, out of control.”
• Racial Barriers:
  • MTV’s initial reluctance to broadcast Black artists’ videos—David Bowie calls this out on air.
  • [25:36] David Bowie (to VJ Mark Goodman): “I’m just floored by the fact that there’s so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?”
  • [27:05] Alan Cross: “It wasn’t until CBS Records threatened to pull all their videos... once ‘Beat It’ appeared, ‘Thriller’ started selling 200,000 copies a week. The color barrier had been broken.”

5. Global Proliferation and the Golden Era (27:18–33:00)

• Rise of Other Channels:
  • MuchMusic (Canada, 1984), VH1 (1985), and global expansions like MTV Europe, The Box, BET, etc.
  • MuchMusic’s launch: Canadian artists and historic music-film synchronizations.
  • [32:19] J.D. Roberts: “Heck of a way to start a rock and roll show.”
• Videos as Recoupable Investments:
  • Videos counted as promotional expenses recouped from artist royalties—but big hits justified the upfront cost (e.g., Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”).

6. Groundbreaking Music Videos and Effects (33:00–39:00)

• Iconic Videos:
  • Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” (emotional headshot)
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers’ "Give It Away" (black and white desert imagery)
  • Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: Shot in 1991, catapulted grunge into the mainstream.
    • [36:20] Alan Cross: “The video starred real life fans who really did destroy the set. Total cost was about $50,000.... the guitar Kurt used in that video sold at auction in 2022 for £3.5 million.”
• Wider Cultural Impact:
  • Music videos shape not just consumer choices and musical taste, but fashion, makeup, gender expression, and attitudes toward sexuality.
  • MTV Awards become must-see events—more relevant than the Grammys.
  • A “symbiotic relationship” between channels and labels/manufacturers, driving massive profits and disseminating Western pop culture globally.
  • [37:29] Alan Cross: “And as long as music videos could only be found on TV and controlled entirely by the networks and the labels, the money would just keep rolling in. And it did. Until it didn’t.”
• Lead-in to Part 2:
  The episode closes with a promise to examine the fall and digital rebirth of the music video in the next episode.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power and Excess of Music Videos:
  • [01:24] Alan Cross: “During the heyday, some videos cost millions upon millions of dollars to produce…You can make a feature-length movie with that kind of cash.”
  • [02:11] Alan Cross: “The art of the video affected the art of movie making. It affected the way we look at TV, not to mention fashion, language, politics, gender fluidity, LGBTQ issues, and so much more.”
• On Industry Transformation:
  • [21:54] Alan Cross: “MTV began to quickly affect the course of music because it began to really matter what you looked like.”
  • [22:41] Alan Cross: “The thin edge of the wedge was a five piece band from England…their label EMI invested $200,000 on three video shoots in Sri Lanka. The gamble worked. The band was Duran Duran.”
• On Racial Exclusion and Breakthrough:
  • [25:36] David Bowie: "I’m just floored by the fact that there’s so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?"
  • [27:05] Alan Cross: “The color barrier had been broken.”
• On Canadian Content and MuchMusic:
  • [32:19] J.D. Roberts: “Heck of a way to start a rock and roll show.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:52–07:54: History of pre-MTV visual music, Oskar Fischinger, Soundies, Scopitone
• 08:03–13:12: Beatles' pioneering promotional films, The Monkees, early music labels’ experiments
• 13:12–14:43: Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the conceptual leap
• 14:43–17:25: Bowie’s video innovations and the MTV "what if" moment
• 18:17–24:44: Launch and rapid ascent of MTV, its cultural consequences
• 24:44–27:05: MTV's racial gatekeeping, Bowie’s confrontation, Michael Jackson’s impact
• 27:18–32:53: Global cable expansion, The launch of MuchMusic, how music videos impacted the business model
• 33:00–38:00: Groundbreaking videos of the ’80s and ’90s (Thriller, Sledgehammer, Nothing Compares 2 U, Smells Like Teen Spirit) and their influence
• 38:00–39:00: Recap and tease for Part 2 (“the money would just keep rolling in. And it did. Until it didn’t.”)

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Tone and Style

Alan Cross maintains a dynamic, conversational style—witty, candid, full of awe for music video pioneers and unflinching about music industry misfires. He blends narrative history with sharp cultural commentary, weaving in archival audio and quotes for immersive storytelling.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode offers a one-stop primer on how music videos went from novelty to necessity, shaped the business and look of pop, fostered both inclusivity and exclusion, and redefined how artists engaged audiences. Packed with stories and soundbites—from Beatles promos and “Bohemian Rhapsody” to Bowie’s critique of MTV racism and the launch of MuchMusic—it's essential listening for anyone curious about music, media, and cultural change. Don’t miss Part 2 for the digital shakeup and where music videos go next.

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Transcript

[Alan Cross]

Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon music included with Prime. This is going to sound like a silly and quaint thing to say, but once upon a time, the only way to get music was to listen for it. You turned on a radio or you bought a record. If it sounded good, there was a chance the song might become a hit. That's what mattered, the sound of the record. That all began to change in the 1970s, and in less than 10 years, sound began to matter less. How the song looked became the thing. Critics laughed at the notion of a music video in the early days. But then came MTV, the world's first 24 hour music video channel. They called it Illustrated Radio and it worked. After that we got MuchMusic, VH1, M2, Edge TV, Much More Music, much Loud, the Box, and dozens of others around the world. And for years, years and years and years, if you wanted a chance to make it big, you had to make a music video. Yes, it was expensive, but too bad it was all part of the game. During the heyday, some videos cost millions upon millions of dollars to produce. Remember the video for Scream by Michael and Janet Jackson back in 1995? In today's money, that video, which runs for 4 minutes and 47 seconds, cost just under $15 million. Madonna made three videos with budgets more of $10 million. I mean, you can make a feature length movie with that kind of cash. Pretty singers with mediocre songs often became stars, while less attractive performers with good songs had a good chance of being passed over. The art of the video affected the art of movie making. It affected the way we look at tv, not to mention fashion, language, politics, gender fluidity, LGBTQ issues, and so much more. Videos may have altered our attention spans too. Music videos exported soft power from the west, especially the United States. This culture export went all over the world. And at one point, MTV was one of the most influential creators and disseminators of culture. And, and by culture, I mean American culture. But that was then. Music videos are still an art form and still necessary, well, mostly necessary for promoting music. But things just aren't what they used to be. How did we get to this point? This is part one of the rise and fall and future of the music video. This is the ongoing history of new Music Podcast with Alan Cross. Hi there, I'm Alan Cross, and although this is an audio program, this episode is all about video. Specifically the music video. Something that used to be absolutely bloody integral to everything to do with the music industry now, not so much, at least compared to the 80s 90s when music videos were among the biggest thing in entertainment. Listen to this. At one point, MTV reached 140 countries and 342 million homes. It was an unimaginably important exporter of American pop culture, for better or worse. And this empire was huge. MTV, MTV2, MTV Classic, VH1. They had competitors in Fuse the Box, BET, CMT and loads of channels in the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. But at 6am British time on December 31, the last MTV Music channel signed off. 44 years from birth to death. Now, MTV still exists as a company. Of course there are still MTV channels, but they just don't show long sets of music videos anymore. It's all about lifestyle and drama and endless repeats of ridiculousness. Much music still exists, but there's not much music about it. It's just much. No more continuous video programming. Music videos are secondary to BET, CMT and fuse the box. Much more music. And MTV's dozen or so overseas competitors are all dead. That's quite a rise and fall. Yet the music video still lives. This is a fascinating story and we need to start at the very beginning. For centuries, people have been finding new ways of visualizing music. Opera, ballet and musicals are examples. When the motion picture came along in the late 1800s, musical scores were written to complement the action on the screen. But the guy who really invented the music video was a dude named Oskar Fischinger. This is called Study number five. You can't see it obviously, but it's a short experimental film featuring abstract images moving to music from an American musical called I've Never Seen a Smile Like Yours. Oskar Fischinger had been fascinated by mating music and visuals as early as 1921. It's primitive stuff now, but back in the 20s and 30s, this stuff was magic. Over the next 20 years there were further developments in mating music to film. Warner Bros. Debuted something called Spoonie melodies in the 1930s. They were shown before the main feature at music theaters. Walt Disney got especially good at this, producing amazing animated works like Fantasia in 1940. Later in the decade, the panoram Soundie made its debut. This was a machine manufactured by a Chicago company headed up by the son of President Franklin Roosevelt. For the price of a couple of nickels, he you would get a short black and white film projected on a 27 inch screen. About 2000 of these 3 minute shorts on 16 millimeter film were made exclusively for the Panoram machines were loaded with a single reel of film that ran in a continuous loop. There was no choice allowed. When you put in your 10 cents, you saw whatever soundie was next on the reel. And there were usually about eight songs per reel, all in black and white. Of course, 5,000 of those machines were manufactured selling for about $1,000 each back then. That's about $23,000 in today's money. If you've ever seen some kind of filmed music performance from back then, chances are that is a soundie made for the panoram. Here's an audio example from 1942. It features cab Calloway doing Minnie the Moocher. We see him with cuts to members of his orchestra.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Folks, here's a story about Min. She was a red hot huchi coocher

[Alan Cross]

Panoram soundies were a big deal for a few years before production problems caused by World War II and the rise of television killed them off. The idea was resurrected in the early 1960s by a couple of European companies. The most successful was a French manufacturer called Cameca. Who patented the technology for a machine called the Scopetone in 1958. This was sort of a video jukebox that weighed 1500 pounds and could be loaded with three dozen 16 millimeter films, each of which was shot exclusively for the machine. And most of these films were in color. The most famous scope of movie Featured Nancy Sinatra's 1966 hit these Boots Are Made for Walkin'.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

These boots are made for walkin and that's just what they'll do One of these days these boots are gonna walk

[Alan Cross]

all over you Scope A tones were surprisingly popular for a while. Even at the price of $3,500, which is about $35,000 today. At least 800 were installed in the US mostly at bars, cocktail lounges, nightclubs, and the occasional truck stop. They were deliberately kept away from where teenagers might hang out. Because no one wanted to mess with the highly lucrative jukebox business. And remember, a lot of the jukebox industry was controlled by the mob back then. So you didn't want to mess with them. Classic rock groups like Proko Harem tried it for their big hit, A Whiter Shade of Pale. Neil Sedaka, Bobby V, Dionne Warwick and a few others got into the scopa tone business. However, machine build quality wasn't great. British invasion stars like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones wouldn't play along. And the Sicilian mob moved in and basically seized control of the scope of tone business. Popularity of Scope of Tones began to taper off in about 1967, but they did hang on. The Carpenters and ABBA made films for the machines and the last scope of film was made in 1978. A big part of the problem was again television. Programs like American Bandstand, Ed Sullivan and the Tonight show had been featuring live musical performances for years. Same thing in Britain with shows like Top of the Pops and the Old Grey Whistle Test. Now let's talk about that for a second. By 1965, the Beatles were tired of the grind of performing on radio and tv. What if there was a way to appear on TV without having to appear on tv? The answer was a couple of filmed promotional clips for the songs We Can Work it out and Day Tripper. Both were shot in November 1965 and then they were sent out to anyone requesting a Beatles performance. They also did this with I Feel Fine, Ticket to Ride and Help. Record labels loved all these TV options because it allowed so many more of their acts to perform on television with all the added expense and travel. And then in the fall of 1966, a major breakthrough.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Hey hey with a monkeys and people say we're monkey around but we're too busy singing to put anybody down.

[Alan Cross]

The Monkees were the first made for TV pop band. They were put together in late 1965 by a couple of executives at ABC who wanted to capitalize on the success of the Beatles. Each half hour sitcom ish show featured at least one music video type sequence. The Monkees took off and ended up having a long string of hit singles. At about the same time, British acts like the Kinks and the who were experimenting with conceptual films designed to promote songs and albums. The most famous was the surreal film the Beatles created for their Magical Mystery tour album in 1968. But even with the Beatles getting into promotional clips, any TV program that showed a lot of these music films had terribly low ratings. And it wasn't long before most people gave up on them. But there were some who weren't about to give up. Bruce Conner was an American underground artist. He had a short film called Breakaway which featured future MTV star Tony Baszel. Remember her and Mickey performing a striptease to a song she'd written? That was 1966. A few people at Warner Bros. Records also recognized the potential of visual music and formed a division dedicated to the idea. This wasn't too much of a stretch for them because after all, they owned a major movie studio. One of the very first, well, we might as well call them videos now, was designed as a commercial for this 1970 song from Captain Beefheart. It's called Lick My decals off, baby.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Rather than I wanna hold your hand, I wanna swallow your holes and I won't lick you Every way you speak in every way you think.

[Alan Cross]

Warner Brothers wasn't the only label to experiment with music clips. But most of them were produced for internal use only. Labels hired a director to shoot films for up to 60 performers and then stick them all on a 90 minute reel, which would then be screened at sales conferences around the world. That way, label reps got to see, as well as hear what they would be plugging over the next few months. Sometimes, though, schedules didn't sync up. Artists would be unavailable when these reels were being shot. And that's when directors would go ahead and shoot conceptual pieces that more or less followed along with the music. And this is where a lot of the ideas for the modern music video came from. Then in 1975, another major breakthrough.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy Caught in a landslide Though escape from reality Queen's Bohemian

[Alan Cross]

Rhapsody is credited as being the first modern music video. And here's why. Even though many other bands had shot promotional film clips for songs, Bohemian Rhapsody was the first to be shot on videotape. Second, it was a conceptual piece, not just another film of a band playing the song. Freddie Mercury started it all when he became infatuated with the COVID of Queen's second album and wanted to create that image on video. Why? Because Queen refused to perform the song on tv. Why? Because the rules of the British Musicians union prohibited lip syncing on tv. And without lip syncing or at least backing tracks, there was no way for Queen to faithfully perform Bohemian Rhapsody live. So they made this video as a way around union rules. The clip was shot in three hours. They started at seven at night, and by 10:15 that evening they were all in a pub. Total cost about $3,500, or about $21,000 today. And it worked. The clip for Bohemian Rhapsody helped turn Queen into global superstars. And of course, nothing succeeds like success. Suddenly everybody wanted to shoot videos. Most of them were quick and dirty affairs costing, I don't know, $10,000 or less. And much to everyone's surprise, these promotional clips became very effective commercials for albums and singles. But some performers saw the music video as an entirely new art form. One person was, of course, David Bowie. In 1980, he made a groundbreaking video for a song from his Scary Monsters album, which he co directed. It used a new video manipulation technique called Quantel Paintbox a computer graphics workstation which allowed for all kinds of special effects. Raw video was shot in Beachy Head in East Sussex. There's no story here, it's just sort of a dream sequence in which Bowie plays three different characters. A clown, an astronaut, which gave a nod to both his major Tom character from Space Oddity and the movie Alien, which had just come out and a mental patient. Costuming was important. Everything was inspired by the movie the Sound of Music. The extras in the film were plucked from an avant garde hangout in London known as the Blitz Club. One of them was Steve Strange, who would later head up his own new romantic band called Visage. It looks primitive now, but back in 1980, this was state of the art. And the cost for this film was about $65,000. That's $250,000 in today's. David Bowie with a song that inspired a tremendously influential video. Bowie's surreal but very fashionable clown character helped jumpstart the whole new romantic movement of the early 1980s. So fine, we have more and more performers getting into the art of video production and fans seem to enjoy them. But where could anyone actually see these things? Yeah, there were a few TV shows that ran the occasional video, but not that many. Some bar set up TVs and ran videos, but you still had to go out to see them. What if there was a TV channel? Now, wait, wait, wait, hear me out. What if there was a TV channel devoted entirely to rolling nothing but music videos? Nah, they said it would never work. Yeah, back in a moment. In the late 70s, cable TV was starting to catch on. ESPN surprised critics by becoming a successful all sports station, Something they said would never work. CNN was all news, HBO was all movies, and Nickelodeon was all kids. In September 1979, Warner Communications merged with American Express. Yes, the credit card company. The new entity was called Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Corporation. And their goal was to exploit the growing potential of cable television. The head of this new company was John Lack. Some of his ideas included a shopping channel, an all game show channel, and a channel devoted to nothing but talk shows. But then one day he met Mike Ness Smith. Yes, the Mike Nessmith from the Monkees. By 1980, he was into making experimental video clips for some of his songs. He called them pop clips. One of his productions, a track called Rio, was so interesting that when he showed it to a group of record executives in Europe, they actually stood up and cheered.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

My feet have gone loose from their moorings. I'm feeling quite wonderfully free and I think I will travel to Rio.

[Alan Cross]

By the end of 1980, John Lack was convinced that the company should create a channel that showed nothing but music videos 24 hours a day. And through late 1980 and to 1981, Lachinas people worked from their offices to create this channel, which they were going to call TV1, or maybe TVM with the M standing for naturally Music. Most critics, okay, pretty much all of them said that their idea stunk. But here's where they got lucky. Because in 1980, the recording industry was in big trouble. The disco bubble had burst. And for the first time since the 1930s, sales were down. Not just a little, a lot. A whole 10% year over year. There was a brutal recession. Some people were paying interest rates of 20% or more. No one wanted to spend, especially when it came to discretionary income. The recorded music industry needed something to get them back on track. And remember, this thing called the CD was still a couple of years away from mass market. By August 1, 1981, it was all ready. About 3 million households had signed up, Even though a lot of cable systems, including in Manhattan, where MTV was headquartered, decided to sit things out. Because you know what? This just wasn't going to work. TVM had become MTV. And at one minute after midnight on that summer night, August 1, 1981, John Lack read the introduction. T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. We've gone for main engine start. We have main engine start. Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll. The choice for the first clip was very appropriate. It was a song by a British band called the Buggles that had been released two years earlier. It was a big hit in various parts of the world, but it only made it to number 40 in the US back then. But from the moment that video hit MTV, music was put on a very different trajectory. Video Killed the Radio Star was the first video shown on mtv. It was followed by you'd Better Run by Pat Benatar. The first Canadian video was Just between youn and Me from April Wine, which showed up as the 14th video. The first metal song was Wrathchild by Iron maiden at number 70. And the first punk song was do youo Remember Rock and Roll Radio by the ramones at number 105. There were a lot of repeats. MTV launched with a library of about 250 videos, and 30 of them were from Rod Stewart. The good news is that the parent company of mtv, Warner Bros. Owned a lot of record labels. And these labels were instructed to get on the video bandwagon so that MTV would have a steady supply of new product. Everyone was surprised by the effectiveness of music videos. There was a direct connection between showing a video on MTV and a dramatic increase in sales for that record. Remember, the music industry was in deep recession in the early 80s, so no wonder. It didn't take long for other labels to start budgeting for music videos. And within a year, MTV and Music Videos became integrated into the marketing and promotion budgets for all the labels. And MTV got all these videos for free. It's promotional material. MTV began to quickly affect the course of music because it began to really matter what you looked like. This is incredibly important. Before the music video, rock stars were always distant, unknowable and mysterious. The only time you got to see them was either in a magazine during a rare TV appearance, or live in concert. Beyond that, you had no real visual idea or impression of these people. It was all in your imagination. But the music video changed all that. Performers, marketers and directors began to emphasize looks and glitz. And it wasn't long before style began to surpass substance. The thin edge of the wedge was a five piece band from England. Realizing that they had a very attractive, very stylish, very telegenic pop band, their label EMI invested $200,000 on three video shoots in Sri Lanka. The gamble worked. The band was Duran Duran.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand Just like that river twisting through dusty land Duran Duran.

[Alan Cross]

With Rio, an early MTV favorite, the industry finally knew that they were onto something. When Duran Duran albums started selling out in places like Oklahoma City Just days after MTV started spinning the video, the city had one of the few cable systems willing to take a risk on mtv. And Duran Duran weren't the only ones to benefit. MTV was desperate for videos. British acts had been making promotional films for years to satiate Top of the Pops and all those other UK shows. And that's why all these unknown British bands suddenly began to get exposure in the United States. The video quickly became a direct pipeline to the musician. An artist could suddenly reach more people with one video than they could with one year on the road. MTV got together with labels and artists for a campaign called I Want My mtv, which encouraged people to phone their local cable companies and demand that they carry this new channel. Promos like this began to run constantly on mtv, featuring the Police, Pat Benatar, Pete Townsend, Cyndi Lauper, Billy Idol, and even David Bowie.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Turn it on, Leave it on America See the music you want to see

[David Bowie]

I want my mtv all right I want my MTV.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

I want IMTV 24 hours a day on cable TV.

[Alan Cross]

I want IMTV. MTV. MTV, yeah.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Too much is never enough.

[Alan Cross]

How effective was that campaign? It was off the charts, out of control. Cable companies were bombarded with phone calls and letters. And more and more and more and more of them signed on, extending the channels and the power of the music video. All across the US Bands loved mtv. They even started singing about it. One final bit of MTV history. For the first couple of years of mtv, the channel showed nothing but rock and pop. If you were a black artist, the chances of you getting on MTV were zilch. Even if your name was Michael Jackson, which greatly annoyed David Bowie in 1983. He sat down for an MTV interview with Vijay Mark Goodman, where he called out the channel's subtle racism.

[David Bowie]

I'd like to ask you something, you know. All right. It occurred to me, having watched MTV over the last few months that it's a solid enterprise and it's got a lot going for it. I'm just floored by the fact that there's so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?

[Vijay Mark Goodman]

I think that we're trying to move in that direction. We want to play artists that seem to be doing music that fits into what we want to play for mtv. The company is thinking in terms of narrow casting.

[David Bowie]

That's evident. It's evident in the fact that the only few black artists that one does see are on about 2:30 in the morning to around 6. Very few are featured predominantly during the day.

[Vijay Mark Goodman]

No, that's a. I'll say that over

[David Bowie]

the last couple of weeks, these things have been changing, but it's a slow process.

[Vijay Mark Goodman]

I know. It's funny. I think people have different perceptions. When you wind up watching, let's say you watch an hour or two or even three a day, people somehow come away with different ideas about what we are doing. We don't have any kind of day parting for anything, let alone a black artist day parted out of, what would be, quote, prime time.

[David Bowie]

We don't have that because one sees a lot on the. There's one black station on television that I keep picking up. I'm not sure which station it's on, but there seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I'm surprised aren't used on mtv.

[Alan Cross]

It wasn't until CBS Records allegedly threatened to pull all their videos from the channel that MTV caved and started to show videos from the Thriller album. Once the clip for Beat it appeared, thriller started selling 200,000 copies a week. The color barrier had been broken. Here's a fact that's often overlooked. MTV was the first cable TV channel to be profitable. No wonder other video channels started popping up. MuchMusic made its debut in 1983. MTV created a sister channel called VH1 in 1985. Then there was Black Entertainment Television, Bet the Box. MTV Europe came along in 1987. M2 started in 1996. There was MCM in France, Viva in Germany, ZTV in France, plus an ever growing list of satellite channels. The music video became the most powerful marketing tool a record label and an artist could possibly have. Videos build careers and if you did it wrong, they could destroy careers. They ushered in new trends in not only music, but in fashion and language as well. And it effective not only how we bought music, but how we perceived it. And that's another important point. Music no longer inhabited just the imagination. What was going on in your head when you heard a song? Performers and directors began to tell us what images the music was supposed to invoke. And then there was that whole style over substance thing. Many, well, let's just say it marginally talented performers did well. Not because the music was good, but just because they looked good. On the flip side, artists with superior talent but shall we say telegenically challenged didn't do as well because, well, they were ugly. This explains why someone like Madonna is a superstar, but somebody like Elvis Costello, not so much. Sorry, Elvis. When we come back, more on the impact of the music video. MTV and the makers of music videos had a challenge. How to create maximum visual impact on a small TV screen. Again, you got to remember back then, if you had a 20 inch TV, you were doing well and all the audio came from a single 5 inch speaker in mono. Kind of underwhelming, right? So how did they surmount those technological challenges? By going over the top when it came to visuals. Bright colors, fast edits, crazy juxtaposition of images and of course, dollops of sex. The goal was to sell youth culture to youth. Well, a youth culture that was carefully curated by mtv. Of course, these production aesthetics slowly seeped into other areas like film and regular television. Everything had to have that MTV feel. Through the 80s and 90s, music videos became more and more sophisticated and more and more expensive. But again, the return on investment was worth it. A hit video would result in more radio airplay and more album sales. Canada though was sidelined for the first few years of the music video era. Because MTV did not adhere to Canadian content rules, it was illegal for them to broadcast in Canada. Oh sure, you could pull Things down from a satellite with a giant 12 foot dish, something that a lot of bars and restaurants did, but that was illegal. And as for getting MTV on your TV at home, no again, unless you had one of those dishes in the backyard. And keeping ahead of all the encryption keys by reprogramming your illegal box, that was not fun. It was decided that Canada needed its own music video channel. The CRTC opened bidding for a license. Three companies applied. Rogers Radio Broadcasting, a company called cmtv, Canadian Music Television and Chum Limited. Only one could win because the CRTC didn't think the Canadian market was big enough for more than one video music channel. So on April 2, 1984, Chum was awarded the license largely because they had experience with music programs like the New Music and city limits. By August 31, 1984, it was ready. The first video by MuchMusic was not new. It was an old series of Films from the 1920s featuring music by jazz and ragtime star Eubie Blake. Let's have a listen to the launch tonight.

[J.D. Roberts]

Live from coast to coast, the launch of Canada's first 24 hour music channel, the nation's music station, Much Music. Featuring the world video premiere of Rush, the Enemy within and the Spoons Tell no Lies. Plus the Canadian video premiere of yes, Elvis Costello, the Fix, Human League, Slave Culture Club and a few surprises. Get on with it here.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

All right.

[J.D. Roberts]

All right. Heck of a way to start a rock and roll show.

[Alan Cross]

Yeah.

[J.D. Roberts]

That's a little bit of a snappy opening, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. I'm J.D. roberts. I'm Christopher Ward. And what we have for you to kick the whole thing off is the first time that music and picture were ever synced. This is from 1922 and Ub Blake. This is Snappy Song on MuchMusic.

[Alan Cross]

The first video shown on MuchMusic was the Enemy within from Rush's new album Grace Under Pressure.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Things crawl in the darkness that imagination

[Alan Cross]

spins

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

Needles at your nerves Crawl like spiders on your skin.

[Alan Cross]

And with that, MuchMusic was off and running. It wasn't live 24. 7. An eight hour segment was repeated twice daily, punctuated by specialty shows on certain days. Now, here's something that we need to discuss. All video productions were considered a recoupable expense by the record label. That meant that artists paid for their music videos because they were promotional tools. The cost of making videos was deducted from future royalties due the artist. But if the video was impactful enough, that didn't matter because so much money could be made. Case in point was Michael Jackson's Thriller album. It became the biggest selling album of all time thanks to the big budget music videos for the seven singles from the album. And there were only nine songs on the record. The song Thriller was made into a 13 minute $900,000 video which is equivalent to about $3 million today. Later on, the big TV networks were would fight each other for the privilege of debuting a new Michael Jackson video in the middle of prime time. People still talk about Peter Gabriel's brilliant claymation video for sledgehammer in 1986. That four minute clip was made up of more than 7,000 still shots. And like many early videos, it was inspired by a classic piece of film. In the case of Sledgehammer, the template was a movie made by a Czech surrealist who named Jan Svenkmayer. Beginning in the 1960s, he put together some really, really freaky stuff. Gabriel was fascinated by Svenkmeyer's stuff and hired a director named Steven Johnson to make it happen. He worked with a studio called Aardman Animations, the company that would later make all the Wallace and Gromit films. Making the video was excruciating. At one point, Gabriel had to lie motionless on his back underneath a big sheet of glass for 16 straight hours. But was it worth it? Yeah. The video won nine MTV Music Video awards and is still regarded as one of the greatest videos ever made. There were some truly great music videos during the glory years of the 80s and 90s. The simple headshot of Sinead O' Connor singing Nothing Compares to youo. There was the Red Hot Chili Peppers Give it away in 1991, featuring a great series of black and white images in the desert. And who could forget the video that ushered in the whole grunge era in 1991. It was shot at GMT Studios in Culver City, California by a director named Sam Baer. The date was August 17, 1991. The video starred real life fans who really did destroy the set. Total cost was about $50,000. All that smoke, chalk dust, everyone had a really hard time breathing. But the result was, well, pretty explosive. By the way, the guitar that Kurt used in that video sold at auction in 2022 for £3.5 million. Throughout the 90s, the recorded music industry was making more money than anyone thought possible. And music videos were a very big part of that. A hot video meant sales of high margin CDs. Meanwhile MTV, its spinoff channels like VH1, competitors like the Box and Fuse, which by the way, was launched as MuchMusic USA in 1994 and dozens of overseas channels thrived. Labels and artists needed them. Maybe more than the channels needed the labels and artists. Whatever. It was a highly profitable, symbiotic relationship that was not just shaping culture, but leading it, manufacturing it, and selling it around the world. And this was gonna go on forever. Well, no. Music videos transformed not only the recorded music industry in the 80s and 90s, but the very fabric of culture. Western culture, especially from America, was exported to the rest of the globe through videos and the channels that played them. And it wasn't just music video channels. Regular linear TV channels and networks all came up with their own music video shows. People raced home from school in hopes that their show or channel of choice would play their favorite video. Even if they didn't. They learned so much by being exposed to other videos from artists from around the world. Fashion, makeup, sexuality, all that was included. People learned about different types of music. Grunge and alternative thrived. Hip hop and rap grew into monsters. Video music award shows were required watching because anything could happen and anyone could show up. They were sure a lot more interesting than the stodgy, out of touch Grammy awards. Meanwhile, the channels released compilation CDs in cooperation with record labels. They sold by the millions. There was so much money being made. I know I've said that, but I gotta say it again. There was so much money being made. And as long as music videos could only be found on TV and controlled entirely by the networks and the labels, the money would just keep rolling in. And it did. Until it didn't. That's where we'll pick things up next time with part two of the Rise and Fall and Future of the Music Video. If you want to get caught up on ongoing history shows, there's a massive podcast archive featuring hundreds of shows. They're all available for download on all the platforms and you can take as many as you want. I'm on most of the social media platforms doing, I guess, whatever you do on social media these days. There's my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com, which is updated every day with music news and information. And while you're there, sign up for the free daily newsletter. Email can go to alancross ca and I will get right back to you. Technical production for all this is by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross. Firefighters risk their lives every single day. Fridays on global.

[Narrator/Voice Actor]

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