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Racial Discrimination alive and well on TV in the 80s
Gerry Mandarin
Posts: 890 Forum Member
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Watching an interesting documentary today on Sky Arts "The Music Videos That Shaped the 80s". Very interesting commentary on some of them from the actual artists and directors. For example, MTV refused to play Michael Jackson's Billie Jean video and Herbie Hancock's "Rocket" video because the artists were black. I was quite shocked that that attitude still existed on TV at that time.
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Not sure if it was racist though. In the UK at the time you had Radio 1 on MW and ILR on FM. Music stations played a wide range of genres, indeed Radio 1, Radio 2 and 6 Music have a broad range of genres now.
In the USA stations are stuck in formats. Rock, Country, Soul etc. So an artist like MJ in the 80's had a lot of work to appeal to many Americans who would not hear his music on their station of choice. He would be played on a Top 40 station or maybe a Soul/Urban station. but not on a Country one.
Of course in the UK we have learnt a great lesson form the USA, and have more format radio, focused on a key target audience. Would Kerrang play Michael Jackson?
Early MTV was focused on AOR Album oriented Rock, Thriller was a bit early to be on MTV...it was not rock I guess.
Actually Godley & Crème shot the "Rockit" video with robots, and Herbie Hancock just appearing on a TV screen so it COULD appear on MTV.
This was because you are correct about MTV not wanting to show "black artists" in the early days - allegedly. !!
Black artists have always formed a part of mainstream American music, more so than ever since the 1970s. I am not sure what MTV were thinking, except quite a ridiculous assertion that MTV would be a credible pop-culture product without black artists appearing on-screen!
Nowadays, of course R&B, Soul and hip-hop form the most popular genres of American music.
When it launched in 1980, from what I read it was album music. By mid 80's it took on more formats.
I recall a couple of album orientated outlets at the time. Whilst Thriller was huge, how many other black artists were taking on the album chart? Look at best selling albums by year, Jackson was the first black artist to have best selling album of the year. Followed by Lionel Richie and then Bad by Michael Jackson. Only until you get to 2012 do you find Emeli Sande in the British Album charts, being best seller of the year.One of the best selling albums form 1984, never number One of the year was Bob Marley and the Wailers, Legend which was released after Bob died.
So was MTV racist? Or has it just evolved. to realise the singles chart, downloads etc
Because it was a ROCK station to start off.
http://racerelations.about.com/od/hollywood/a/MTVsRaceRelatedGrowingPains.htm
read above link, appears it took a few weeks to get air time on MTV
is there a Gold Video Music channel?
Thinking some Queen, Michael Jackson. would a video gold channel work with all these Gold Radio stations?
Yes, Vintage TV
Yes indeed. The Black Music Awards are just racist. How do they get away with it? Imagine the outcry if the White Music Awards were created!
except it's not true. It's a myth they never played black acts. MTV were a new wave/rock station then not a soul/disco channel. Why would they playlist Rockit or the early Thriller singles? They were playing a few black artists that fitted their format such as Musical Youth, Eddie Grant, Joan Armatrading, Tina Turner before the Jackson thing. Were black stations racist for not playing A Flock of Seagulls or Van Halen? Of course not. In America playlists have always been narrow and it works both ways. The woman in charge of the video playlist at MTV at the time was black by the way
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Breaking_the_.22color_barrier.22_.281981-1983.29
How dare there be 'white music'
it didn't stop the NME relentlessly pushing hip hop though! The readers were overwhelmingly rock fans so why would anyone be surprised that a rap act on the cover affected sales? I'm sure if Blues and Soul had put the Style Council on their cover their sales would've tanked too. I'm sure NME covers featuring Prince, Marvin Gaye or Jimmy Hendrix didn't have that Public Enemy effect.
Thanks for that post. It does put things into a clearer context.
Because I watched another music documentary a couple of years ago and they said the same thing mentioned in the OP. So I too was under the same impression as the OP.
The thing with the media is that when it looks at things retrospectively, opinion can very easily end up becoming perceived as fact, and thus myths get regurgitated and propagated down the years as everyone ends up believing in bullshit.
Hardly anyone is immune from believing in crap which the media put out there. I too appeared to have adopted a misguided belief about the black artists on MTV thing.
All it takes is one talking head on a TV show, who other people over time repeat, and hey presto everyone ends up accepting it as fact.
However that's not to say that racism never exists in the media. I believe that it occasionally does in some form or another. It's just that in this particular case it was probably an inaccurate example of it.
I'd be interested to know.
I am aware that when it came to magazines in general they tended to avoid putting black models on the cover as it supposedly led to poor sales.
So when a magazine or a TV organisation avoid using black people for financial reasons is that a form of racism?
I'd say that it is of sorts.
However a lot would have to do with these organisations making choices on what the general public like, or are likely to buy. Or at least how the organisations perceive the general public will react.
So it isn't black music then is it? Music is music. Having awards for black music is racist full stop.
MOBO stands for Music Of Black Origin. It is basically a genre like Kerrang Awards or Country Music Awards etc. It reflects urban music
NME is largely a promoter of indie music, so I doubt Prince and Michael Jackson would feature much in there, same as Mixmag were unlikely to feature Iron Maiden.
Well, it was the actual directors of the videos that were saying this rather than information quoted from Wikipedia.
Insulting, ignorant and racist. but no outcry. Funny that.