at the time the world was saying, we don t think anybody is going to watch videos over and over. but we knew we had something special. ooh, my little pretty one, pretty one when you gonna give me some time sharona mtv made you feel like those artists were in the room. you had a personal concert all day. crack that whip when you have the rotation of, say, maybe 100 different videos being rotated over and over on mtv, they do a great job of exposing new acts. here in my car where the image breaks down will you visit me please if i open my door in cars britain was ahead of the curve. they had a ton of videos in their inventory, and that was what paved the way for this accidental second british invasion. if you look at some of the groups on the popular music charts in america today you can t help asking where on earth did they come from? well, the answer is the same today as it was two decades ago.
john lennon, as he was entering his premises, was shot by an unknown at this time, white male. the world has reacted with immense shock and grief to the first rock n roll assassination. it was like in one moment the 60s and the 70s got murdered. in his life he s given more love than most men and women on the face of this earth. we re here to prove that love is not dead, even though john is. you know, you start the decade with the death of a beatle. you don t really know where you re going to go from that point, you know, culturally or musically. for a while it seemed there was nothing new on the horizon. announcing the latest achievement in home entertainment. the power of sight. video. the power of sound. stereo. mtv. music television. we all are so excited about this new concept in tv. we ll be doing for tv what f.m. did for radio.
when the rest of the world was going crazy and he can t get on mtv? michael jackson? come on. when he does that moonwalk, if you were sitting on the couch by the end of it, you were on the floor in front of the tv. you couldn t believe what you were seeing. i would say the moonwalk was really one of the first viral moments that affected rock history. the next week thriller started selling a million copies a week. i like michael jackson because he can sing good, he s bad, he knows how to dance. he s so sexy and so gorgeous. he s exciting! michael jackson is the man of the 80s. mtv starts to get pressure from cbs records, which was michael jackson s label. rock n roll, in itself, was really the thing that broke a lot of rules. when you re very successful, you try to make your own rules occasionally. as the story goes, cbs essentially said, we will pull every other artist we have on mtv if you don t play this.
mtv actually met with duran duran s managers and said, we re looking for kind of like james bond videos on location. and their managers are the ones that went to the band members and said, look, we really need to up the ante with these clips. we need to give this channel something they ve never seen before. moving on the floor now babe you re a bird of paradise there are some that have accused your videos of being soft porn. well, excuse me! we like to call them tastefully smutty. her name is rio and she dances on the sand just like that river twisting through a dusty land and when she shines she really when i first met duran duran, they were saying that they thought they looked like rock stars. so why not become rock stars? don t stand don t stand so don t stand so close to me
featured on it. why is that? we have to try and do what we think, not only new york and los angeles will appreciate, but also some town in the midwest that will be scared to death by prince or a string of other black faces. interesting. okay. thank you very much. when are we going to see anybody of color on mtv, because you said music television. when are you going to start covering all genres of music? music has no color. and it shouldn t have color. i don t believe in that. what i do, i don t want it labeled black or white. i want it labeled as music. 1983, motown has this big tv special, motown s 25th anniversary. at that time thriller is out and thriller is doing well. but michael jackson couldn t get billie jean on mtv. she was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene