Introduction
David Bowie, while promoting his 1983 album Let’s Dance (co-produced with Nile Rogers) in an interview with MTV VJ Mark Goodman, relayed his producing partner’s concerns about the state of the industry and asked the television host why so few black artists were featured prominently on the network. When Goodman noted that the network was moving in a more progressive direction, Bowie conceded that in the “last couple of weeks things have been changing”. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video had premiered earlier in the year amongst other videos by artists of color, like Eddy Grant and Prince, but Bowie’s argument that “it’s a slow process” remained. Goodman defended the network, claiming that they weren’t engaging in deliberate racism but rather adhering to a strict album-oriented rock (AOR) format, a holdover from FM radio narrowcasting practices. Goodman’s personal views notwithstanding, the primacy of the AOR format on MTV structurally inhibited the equal representation of black musical artists. In this way, the racial integration of MTV, achieved largely through the monumental success of a particular star, Michael Jackson, illustrates clearly how race relations function in historically segregated institutions. MTV is a channel promoted as revolutionary, a radical break from the past that empowered a new generation, but an exploration of the station’s origins and its intersection with Michael Jackson’s star image reveals that the interests of capital are more often in opposition to radical change.
