 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. Want my MTV? From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes, or on our website SFPodcastNetwork.com. With all the myriad ways that the kids check out new music online, it's easy to forget that we once had a single way to see artists outside of live performances, and that was MTV. It's been made easier as the network has strayed so far from their original format. But there were music videos long before MTV. Even before Electronic Methods, you could watch something called an illustrated song starting in the late 19th century. A live artist with an accompanist would perform alongside a magic lantern which was an early slide projector showing the story of the song. Often, multiple projectors would be used to create special effects. Soon after that, the moving picture would eclipse such things. Of course, there was still the audio element at first provided via live accompaniment in the theater. Paramount's Fleischer Studio introduced Coco Song Cartoon, a series of otherwise silent cartoons starring Coco the Clown, who would introduce a song and then show the lyrics with a bouncing ball over them. And this encouraged the audience to sing along to live accompaniment. Then talkies were introduced, including WB's Vitaphone. This began with short subjects so music performances were a perfect fit. Disney introduced their silly symphonies cartoons and the WB countered with Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies, which would later morph into the classic WB cartoons we all know and love. Full-length movie musicals constituted a huge part of Hollywood's output for decades after that. But there were still shorts, many showing a musical performance by a band or singer. Some of these involved dramatized storylines. Meanwhile, a novelty company merged a traditional jukebox with a film projector and created a panorama. It's kind of like an analog rear projection TV. You could find these wherever you might find a traditional jukebox, bars, diners, clubs, that kind of thing. Multiple companies made short films called Soundies from 1940 to 47 mostly musical performances. And this is where you could see early performances of upcoming stars since the production value was too low to pay for the big guys along with rare appearances of African-American performers. Over 1800 Soundies were produced and might have gone on for far longer if not for the proliferation of television in the late 40s. Early TV leaned heavily on Variety, churning through thousands of song and dance performances. To spice things up, some of those would dramatize the lyrics, but it's hard to call those music videos. A form of Soundies returned in the mid-60s in France now called Scopitone. Most of these resulting films, of course, involved songs sung in French, although some English Scopitones were made. One of these is quite recognizable. Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking, a promotional film turned into a Scopitone. This continued in some form until 1978. Meanwhile, a group of mop-top kids kicked off the British invasion. The Beatles films, A Hard Day's Night and Help are essentially long-form music videos. In 1967, they participated in a globe-spanning television event called Our World, where they performed All You Need Us Love via satellite from their studio. In the same period, the Moody Blues produced Go Now, a video that would easily fit into the modern music video era. By the late 60s, most successful acts were creating some sort of music video, either for marketing, would be shown as a clip on a TV show, for instance, or as background to be shown at their concerts. Of course, there were concert films as well, but that's really not inside the music video scope. By the 70s, two Australian shows, Countdown and Sounds, would promote early music videos, necessary since it was difficult for acts to visit there in person. UK's Top of the Pops did the same. In 1977, Sight on Sound and Pop Clips were introduced as part of Warner Communications Interactive Cable Service Cube. You can check out Episode 87 for more on that. Viewers could actually vote via their remote for their favorite music, and the format included music videos and news. Does this sound familiar? Well, it should, because this was the official tryout of what would become MTV. Kicked off in 1981, MTV brought music video into the mainstream, initially aping radio formats with video jocks or VJs, who would take you from one video to another. It started off appropriately with one hit wonder, the Buggles? Yeah. Video killed the radio star. It's difficult to overestimate MTV's influence on society. Search for TV commercials online pre and post 1981, their speed and complexity exploded, to the point that the earlier ads seemed boring and plotting. New trends and artists were implemented instantaneously, as kids saw and wanted whatever was being shown. Copycat shows such as USA's Night Flight and NBC's Friday Night Videos jumped on the train. Ted Turner created the Cable Music Channel, but quickly sold it to MTV, who refashioned it into VH1, covering more pop, R&B and jazz as opposed to MTV's rock. At first, MTV had a limited set of content, some of it coming from failed plans at RCA to sell video albums via their Selectivision video discs. Several were produced, but they never sold well versus actual films. Selectivision itself would soon fail, but that's another story, see episode 194. Virtually every performer of the 1980s were required contractually to make music videos, and they quickly moved from simple point of camera at the band playing and ad effects, to near cinematic events with grand MTV premieres promoted weeks earlier. A Billboard survey of top 80s videos include songs such as Michael Jackson's Thriller, Badana's Like a Prayer, Ah-Ha's Take on Me, and Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer is just a few examples. MTV began branching out of music by the 90s doing game shows such as Remote Control. By the end of the decade, most of their videos had moved to sister channels, VH1 and country music television, a.k.a. CMT, with the rest moved to a single series, Total Request Live. All three channels leaped on the reality show trend of the 2000s and almost left music videos far behind. And by that point, the kids had already moved past cable TV and onto the internet, and as broadband increased, music videos went there as well. NAPS had pioneered this, if illegally, and YouTube made it easier and theoretically legal. iTunes saved the music industry by making monetization into a simple click and showed videos as well. MySpace went from being a proto-social network into an early hub for online music and video promotion. Today it's all about direct streaming, both music and video. Social media influences can bring a new performer to light and big acts now drop new videos exclusively online. With the current lack of new scripted shows and films of the virus, perhaps music videos, all done at home via Zoom, will make yet another comeback. We'll see. We'll see. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife Tree Comics on iTunes, or on our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Indy. And I'm Mark. Thanks for watching. I won by MTV.