USA for Africa was composed predominantly of
American musical artists, including some legendary
Motown artists. These pop music fund-raising events
typically featured a single, the recording of which
would be filmed and featured as a video to be in-
cluded in the regular rotation of MTV.
Further Packaging of a New Product To further ap-
peal to its target audience, MTV began to offer pro-
gramming that featured activities associated with
that audience. Specifically, MTV’sSpring Breakbe-
gan airing in 1986, and starting in 1981, the network
began hosting its own annual holiday party,MTV’s
New Year’s Eve. As the tastes of its audience developed
and changed, and the voices of critics grew increas-
ingly louder, MTV began to offer lengthier shows de-
voted to a wider array of musical genres. In 1986, 120
Minutesdebuted. The show featured two hours of
underground, alternative rock and pop and brood-
ing New Wave hybrid music. It was targeted at the
college-rock market and other audiences who fa-
vored less commercial, mainstream offerings. Also
in the middle of the 1980’s,Club MTVaired. The
show, targeted at the dance music crowd, did not fea-
ture videos. Instead, it was filmed on location at the
Palladium in New York City and featured dancers at
the club in cutting-edge outfits demonstrating the
latest dances. Veejay Downtown Julie Brown would
occasionally talk to people in the crowd between
spots of recorded music.
In 1987, heavy metal fans were given their own
show,Headbanger’s Ball. In addition to airing heavy
metal videos, the show featured occasional guest ap-
pearances by heavy metal groups, who would inter-
act with veejays in between the videos. Finally, by
1988,Yo! MTV Rapswas offered as a way to showcase
the talent of rap artists. It was hosted by Dr. Dre and
Ed Lover, a rap-influenced comedic duo, and it fea-
tured the pair in the MTV studio, again hosting a se-
ries of videos and sometimes interviewing relevant
guests.
Impact The importance of MTV can be found in
several of its attributes. First, it both appealed to and
helped create the on-demand aspect of the U.S.
youth market during the 1980’s. Second, it illus-
trated the dynamics of popular music throughout
the United States, Australia, and Europe, becoming
one of the most significant chroniclers of musical
trends during the decade. Third, it helped define a
generation by offering to millions of young people
between the ages of twelve and twenty-four the op-
portunity to learn more about their favorite artists
and to see and hear them more often than at any
time previously. The relationship between artists’
public personas, their private lives, and their fan
base became both more complex and more intimate
than ever before, and it shaped young people’s un-
derstanding of and attitudes toward popular cul-
ture. The network also decisively altered the land-
scape of popular culture, both by disseminating
fashion trends quickly and widely throughout the
country and by popularizing editing styles that were
soon incorporated by Hollywood’s film and televi-
sion studios.
MTV viewers were exposed to bands from outside
the market confines dictated by radio, and they were
certainly exposed to a much wider variety of bands
than were present on any one radio station. As a re-
sult, music fans of the 1980’s became more familiar
with the diversity of musical options available to
them, and musicians who would otherwise have had
little hope of significant exposure were able to find
markets that could sustain them. Lastly, MTV pro-
vided enough cultural legitimacy and financial capi-
tal to the new format of the music video to allow it to
develop into an art form in its own right. As a result,
music itself took on a visual as well as an aural com-
ponent, and the popular experience of music was al-
tered.Further Reading
Austen, Jake.TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American
Bandstand to American Idol.Chicago: Chicago
Review Press, 2005. Catalogs seemingly random
events involving musicians and their appearances
on television that defined eras and performers.
Frith, Simon, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Gross-
berg, eds.Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader.
New York: Routledge, 2000. Anthology of articles
that explores the relationship between the 1980’s,
postmodernism, the medium of video, and music
television.
Weingarten, Marc.Station to Station: The Secret Histor y
of Rock ’n’ Roll on Television.New York: Pocket
Books, 2000. Provides a history of rock music in
styles personified by artists ranging from Elvis
Presley to Prince to Run-DMC, via the artists’
relationship with television; includes those who
helped create the MTV era.
Dodie Marie Miller676 MTV The Eighties in America