Video Killed
In a pretty good discussion by Joan Acocella of Michael's Jackson's choreography, we get this:
The “Thriller”-period videos were instrumental in converting MTV from a backwater to a sensation. Jackson consciously aimed at doing that.
A backwater? I'm not denying Jackson's videos, starting in 1983, were a big deal for MTV (and for Jackson himself), but almost from the moment it first went on air in 1981, MTV was a sensation.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:24 AM
3 Comments:
I lived in a community whose cable company didn't carry MTV for those first first few years. That was so frustrating for a teenager! When my friends and I would make plans, we'd almost always start by determining whose house got MTV -- that's where we'd end up. Our cable company eventually added the channel ("I want my MTV" was dead-on) and by the time Thriller came around, I could stop mooching. So yeah, MTV was big before Thriller.
MTV changed after Thriller- it did not so much appeal to MJ and similar fans before then (I recall accusations of racism ) It was mainly new wave with some rock/metal acts. So it was a backwater to uncool
"Jackson consciously aimed at doing that" -- an even more absurd sentence, which she then proceeds to not justify in the rest of her paragraph. Jackson surely wanted his videos to be well-known and popular, but I don't see why we should believe (absent evidence) that he wanted MTV in particular to become a sensation. After all, there were several other channels for videos (MV3, etc) at the time, and if MTV had failed another would have come along.
Re New England Guy's point: By the early 1980s, radio stations (at least in the big markets) had completely separated into different formats: rock, new wave, R&B/disco, country, and pop (which included watered-down versions of the first four genres). MTV attempted to mix rock, new wave, pop, disco, and even some R&B. This was a dangerous marketing choice, and I think led to its later problems. By the mid-80s, the new wave fans I knew would instantly turn the channel if a metal band came on, and vice-versa. And both of them changed the channel when Phil Collins came on.
They eventually split MTV from VH1, but I think a split along genre lines would have been more successful.
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