Over breakfast this morning I caught bits of a documentary on Sky Arts about the history of the pop video. I was astonished to discover that MTV had initially refused to air the video for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (1983) on the grounds that the artist was black. Kudos to Walter Yetnikoff of CBS who, according to Wikipedia, told MTV execs, “I’m pulling everything we have off the air, all our product. I’m not going to give you any more videos. And I’m going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don’t want to play music by a black guy.”
When I am reminded of things like that, I am in awe of how far we have come in the past few decades.
Without wishing to defend any racist practices by MTV, I believe the situation wasn’t as clear-cut as that. MTV maintain it was a question of format as they played strictly rock and roll at the time and only the handful of black artists they felt met this criterion were played. (Michael Jackson certainly wasn’t the first black artist played on MTV.) Whether this was just a cover for musical apartheid, who knows – they were certainly widely criticised for the lack of exposure they gave black artists.
There’s also some doubt about whether the Yetnikoff thing actually happened. The MTV people involved say Yetnikoff would never have risked all his other artists’ MTV exposure just for Jackson’s career. According to them, they were blown away by the Billie Jean video and decided they had to screen it even though it didn’t fit their musical format. Whatever the real story, I can only agree with your overall sentiment.