ABSTRACT
Video music clips shown on Music Television (MTV) are not a recent innovation, but rather the latest variation of the use of recorded popular music in visual media originally pioneered in the late 1920s and 1930s. When network television presented rock and pop music artists, the programming strategy of the networks demanded that these artists appear in programs that appealed to an undifferentiated mass audience and did not alienate any substantial part of this audience. In general, commercial broadcasting's need to attract mass audiences largely prevented the presentation of recording artists that appealed to smaller, narrowly defined demographic groups. The development and commercial success of a program service featuring music video also was facilitated by general economic trends in the 1980s. Warner executives reasoned that a music-oriented channel would attract a younger audience since rock music was a central element of a youth-oriented subculture. In 1980s MTV received much of the credit for the industry's good fortune.
