Katie FitzGibbons

9 December 2022

Music Television History:

Rock and Visual Exploitation

Music and television have been intertwined since the introduction of television in the late

1920s, pairing music with visual components to create a multidimensional experience for the

audience. What is often less common is the use of bands as the subjects on the television screen,

whether through musical performances, music videos or narrative shows starring or depicting

bands. This includes the era that transitioned radio to television setting the groundwork for how

future musicians will be treated, leading to the increase of musical performances on variety

shows and the rise of stardom, which directly led into the new youth culture of the 1980s and

MTV’s music videos, and most recently TV has produced dramatic or comedic depiction of

bands and the music industry such as Pam and Tommy, Pistols, and the 1979 Elvis. Bands exist

on the television screen both as themselves and as “characters” separate from themselves. How

they are depicted is influenced heavily by the era the show came out in and the social, economic,

and political state of the world at the time. A trend we can track throughout all of the eras is the

ever-present exploitation and objectification of musicians on the screen, making them into

aesthetic performance pieces as opposed to a musician valued for their musical talents.

Before TV, there was the radio, circulating various audio and music-related content

across the United States, so it only makes sense that the television industry’s basic structure

evolved so directly from the radio broadcast industry. TV and radio existed in the same industry,

were technologically linked, had very similar patterns of funding and ownership, and early TV
borrowed many of radio’s cultural signifiers and narrative strategies (Hardiman). Radio “set the

terms for the conception of the medium of TV as well as the framework for the development of

broadcasting’s star system” (Murray 2). This star system was perfectly constructed to include

many popular musicians of the era, making them into images and products for various networks

to use to promote their commercial products.

In December 1930, George Engles, the National Broadcasting Corporation’s (NBC) vice

president in charge of programs, wrote that “with the emergence of visual broadcast capabilities

it would be increasingly necessary to review and vet the physical or telegenic attributes of the

signers hired by the network” (Forman 19), emphasizing that only people deemed attractive

should be hired as prospective TV talent, already alluding to the constraints women would face

as musicians in a visual format, due to the high expectations men typically hold over women’s

appearances. A musician’s image and appearance became a central topic as television evolved,

creating many discussions on the conflicts between visual and auditory elements in musical

presentation. Engles encouraged his team to find artists who are “salable,” meaning both

musically talented and visually pleasing, physically able to “sell” themselves to the audiences.

In 1931, CBS launched its television station W2XAB, which featured musical

performances by past radio stars and newcomers such as The Boswell Sisters, Kate Smith, and

George Gershwin. Other stations such as NBC, followed suit. This marked the beginning of an

era where technological barriers began to fall away and the broadcasters could now focus on

aesthetics and programming strategies. As Lynn Spiegel addresses, “film allowed spectators

imaginatively to project themselves into a scene, television would give people the sense of being

on the scene of presentation,” (Spiegel 138-39) making the aesthetics and commercialization of

music stars on TV much more impactful to the audience members at home, who can now see
their beloved musical stars “live” at home where they previously would have only been able to

see those musical stars live in person.

Following these events, “television's progress was interrupted by the outbreak of war in

the early 1940s since the public was not yet fully convinced about TV's value and there was

much room for improvement” (Forman 29). The television industry still developed during this

time period, but it was “truncated by the war effort” (Forman 29). By the end of the war, TV had

20 years of development and technological improvement, setting it up for a full industrial sector,

allowing the concept of musical performances to integrate itself into entertainment trade papers,

and opening space for analysis and criticism of TV’s musical content.

The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), headed by James C. Petrillo, emerged as

a union in the 1930s and 1940s to “effectively secure standard wage scales and employee

protection for professional musicians,” (Forman 36) but the union and Petrillo faced an intense

challenge when musical recordings came into the picture, threatening musicians who relied on

live performance. AFM did everything in its power to pass a recording ban, attempting to make

sure that musicians were not financially compromised by the trend toward recorded music. In

response to this, recording studios hurried to create an archive of recorded material as a cushion

during the ban, and consequently, the television industry suffered during this time. After years of

negotiations, the television industry and Petrillo signed an agreement that allowed televisual

musical performances with a new pay scale. Another element of the agreement was the paying of

“tuxedo rates” to musicians for the aesthetic expenses that were placed on them as visual stars.

However, critics argue that this agreement left Petrillo with little room to navigate, leaving him

constrained when the networks eventually closed ranks on him.

 Musicians themselves faced many of their own internal and external struggles, as

television appearances became the goal to strive for. Anxiety was widespread, “musicians, like

so many Americans at the time, attempted to read the scene before them and to make sense of

new and rapidly evolving social conditions,” (Forman 54). Musicians were anxious about their

new social standings, new social rituals, and new lack of stability. By the late 1940s, television

offered a “hit or miss approach,” making it possible for new and experienced musicians alike to

rise to stardom, but just as likely to fall from fame. Lifelong musicians such as Sophia Tucker

and Ray Anthony expressed disdain for the television, while newer musicians were more excited

at the opportunities it presented.

It wasn’t long before people realized that TV “burn[ed] through an artist's repertoire and

musical arrangements extremely quickly” (Forman 63), demanding new content from musicians

at a much more rapid rate than radio had ever allowed. Various television programs often booked

a single artist to appear across networks in only a two or three-week period, sometimes

double-booking them, completely exhausting musicians. An example of the visual

overexploitation of musical artists is Kyle MacDonnell, who appeared in various shows, hosted a

show, and was dubbed “Miss Television,” but even though her media appearances are extensive,

her television career lasted only about 5 years.

Amateur talent programs such as The Original Amateur Hour, Arthur Godfrey's Talent

Scouts, Freddy Martin's "Band of Tomorrow," and The Horace Heidt Show were another means

for young artists to enter the industry and strive for quick fame, as well as old musicians hoping

to revive their careers. Unfortunately, this led to the capitalization of many relatively

inexperienced musicians and their exploitation. For audiences, these shows exemplified the

“American Myth” that just about anyone can become successful with a little bit of hard work.
 Up until and into the 1950s, singing stars gained national fame due to television, and

more specifically their appearances on variety shows. This contributed to what Susan Murray

called the “broadcast star system” and defined it as “the manner in which stars were utilized,

packaged, and sold…also what types of stars would emerge out of and flourish in this

environment” (Murray 2). But these stars mainly existed in the classical, “crooner,” jazz, opera,

and folk genres, and had not breached the concept of rock ‘n’ roll, yet.

Rock didn’t really make an appearance on TV until the 1950s, mainly because rock ‘n’

roll was part of the youth culture. Youth culture steered away from family TV shows and existed

in public spaces outside of the home. Rock did appear in American Bandstand, but the show was

marketed as a family narrative. However, with Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and onward, the

importance of TV meant promoting stars so that fans actually got to see them, even if just on the

television screen. Frith explains, “Rock music (like all music) is a visual as well as aural form

and it certainly could be argued that the visual conventions of rock performance were shaped by

television – because it was there – in ways that do not apply to musical genres which pre-dated

television” (Frith 283). It was clear that, like in the previous decades, a rock musician’s physical

charisma and performance affected both the conventions of televisual performance and rock

performance.

This meant that record sale success had the potential to be defined by who appeared

telegenic, and “what a rock star is meant to be is therefore to an extent defined by television”

(Frith 284). At the same time, a performance’s authenticity was constantly being reworked and

questioned. The editing, lighting, sound mixing, etc. of a musical performance was meant to give

the audience the best possible experience, emulating “liveness” as well as possible, and perhaps a
little too well. Musicians were encouraged to lip-sync their songs on screen because a recording

sounds better than trying to capture it live.

The musical performances on a show such as the Ed Sullivan Show “seemed not to be

staged for the camera, but to be captured by it” (Frith 285), most characteristically the

appearances of Elvis Prestley and The Beatles. The close-up shots, the pan of the audience, the

screams of excitement, all of this was characteristic of musical performances on variety shows

during this period (which is also a major contributor to the rise of “fangirls” and “fanboys,” but

that is an essay for another time).

To see this 1960s star-making machine in action, we can look more distinctly at the

success of the Beatles and what steps they took to reach their national success. In early 1962,

they secured a spot on BBC’s Light Programme’s 30-minute weekday spot for pop and rock ‘n’

roll called Teenagers Turn, marking their radio debut. They had various radio appearances in the

next few years, coming out of each one more successful than the last. They had multiple TV

performances in 1962 and 1963, focused mainly in the UK, including an appearance on Sunday

Night at the London Palladium, “a Sunday night institution similar to The Ed Sullivan Show in

the United States, with a guaranteed audience of some 15 million viewers” (Sussman 118).

They continued to tour across Europe, making many radio and television appearances.

Then, in February 1964, the Beatles arrived in the United States, where they had their live US

debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. In terms of how big this event was, Sussman gives the figures,

“something approximating half of the available TVs in the country that night were tuned to

Sullivan’s show. The official figure was 73 million viewers in a country with a population of

about 194 million” (Sussman 123). This was the moment for many future rock ‘n’ roll stars, the

moment where they saw themselves on the screen, just like The Beatles, making TV appearances
coveted amongst many popular rock musicians at the time. To summarize the timeline of these

events, Sussman jokes, “just short of two years after emerging from Liverpool with their first

tentative appearances on radio in the north of England, the Beatles had used the star-making

apparatus of their time to reach, as they would say, ‘the toppermost of the poppermost’”

(Sussman 124).

It makes sense that the rising of youth culture in the 1960s and 1970s would lead to

televisual concepts such as MTV in the 1980s. This paper would be sorely lacking if I failed to

mention the 1980s and the impact of MTV on the concept of music television as a whole and the

musicians both as individuals and performers. According to Ann E. Kaplan, “MTV is a 24-hour,

non-stop, commercial cable channel, beamed via satellite across the United States and devoted to

presenting rock music videos around the clock” (Kaplan 1) that became a public corporation in

1984.

MTV embodies a new era of youth culture, and “MTV addresses itself to a broad,

generally youthful section of the American public that ranges from 12 to 34 on up distinguishes

it from earlier rock culture” (Kaplan 8) as opposed to previous generations of rock which

appealed to select groups based on values, ages, social status, and shared experiences. MTV and

1980s rock were for all youth and broadcasted as such.

Kaplan also argues that MTV represented “consumption on a whole variety of levels,

ranging from the literal (i.e. selling the sponsors’ goods, the rock stars’ records, and MTV itself)

to the psychological (i.e. selling the image, the ‘look,’ the style)” (Kaplan 143). Which

demonstrates how MTV has followed the trend of aesthetic-obsession and the objectification of

the musician for the viewing pleasure of the audience member, furthering it to a more drastic

degree.
 To use a case study to look at this, we can look at Madonna and her performance of “Like

a Virgin” at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards. This performance was one of MTV’s first live

performances that was repurposed and repackaged as a music video. While this performance

might not have been a new musical performance. It was a new and striking televisual

performance, and the impact of that video “is felt through Madonna’s subsequent VMA

appearances, and should also be considered in the context of her overall image and

self-preservation, especially as reflected in her other music videos” (Inglis 132).

Madonna’s video is especially a case for the objectification of women in music and the

pressure to dress “slutty” to fit into rock and pop culture. Madonna continued to spoof and

exaggerate this type of performance in her other videos, and her content continued to spread

through MTV. Specifically, in terms of televisual address, Madonna expressed feeling tricked by

MTV at the Video Music Awards because they were “employing two cameras at the rehearsal, but

six at the actual shoot, and that is why there were shots of her underpants” (Inglis 135). She felt

betrayed; however, MTV clearly felt some form of ownership over Madonna’s body and

therefore proceeded to exploit her. Perhaps MTV feels this sense of ownership over musicians

and their bodies because this concept has been building for decades, ever since George Engles

commented on the telegenic attributes of musicians in 1930.

MTV has many other examples of music videos throughout the years, most continuing to

utilize this voyeuristic and intrusive method of portrayal. We’ve seen how this evolved and we

will see how it continues to evolve, convincing not just producers and directors that they have a

right to a musician’s private life, but also convincing the audience and the world around them

that they deserve this right as well.

 In the first decade of the twenty-first century, biological pictures (biopics) of popular

music stars have become increasingly popular, with quite a powerful response from critics and

audiences alike. Biopics seemingly offer to reveal the reality behind a celebrity and their

popularity, to tell the truth, revealing their “true personality;” however, as Lee Marshall states,

“biopics perhaps tell us less about the individual stars and more about the nature of popular

music stardom more generally” (Marshall 346). A biopic has an ambiguous relationship with the

truth and is “always constrained by cinematic convention, collective understandings of history

and the ideologies of stardom” (Marshall 346), making it clear that biopics tend to reveal the

truth behind the images and aesthetic preferences of the television industry as opposed to actual

truths about the musicians.

The first rock biopic movie was Oliver Stone’s The Doors in 1991, followed in the film

industry by many more rock biopics, making up about two-thirds of all music biopics made. This

trend isn’t just in films; however, television also provides a perfect space for music and rock

biopics alike. These include the made-for-tv movie Elvis (1979), and more recently Pam and

Tommy (2022), Pistols (2022), and High School (2022). This increased attention toward the

genre of rock and its players shows the social and aesthetic significance they held during their

eras.

Biopics also have the potential to reveal “the idea that the private individual is constantly

threatened by demands that the individual lives up to their public image” (Marshall 349) both

within the context of the show and with the creation of the biopic in itself. This demonstrates the

exploitation, dehumanization, and fetishization that television and other visual content have had

on popular musicians. An example of this is Pam and Tommy where the content of the show

directly alludes to the exploitation and commercialization of their personal lives for the
consumption of the public, but also in physically making the show, Pam and Tommy’s creators

exploit private information and imaginations about the two individuals’ private lives for the sake

of making a good show, without gaining permission from either Pamela Anderson or Tommy Lee

in the process. They depict both how Motlëy Crüe’s Tommy Lee acted as a performer and also

how he acted as a private individual, exploiting and commercializing his personal life as if it was

as public as his rock performances.

We can see the clear trend for how we got from the American Federation of Musicians to

the exploitation of musicians’ personal lives for the public’s own entertainment. Each era holds a

truth about how music television has evolved and affected the genre as a whole. Television and

music have always been intertwined and continue to affect each other in many impactful ways.

This essay barely scratches the surface of music television history and its impact on both the

music industry and the television industry. Tying this history to race, class, gender and sexual

orientation provides a much more nuanced perspective on the background of this history because

while this essay doesn’t cover these concepts, they are extremely important to understanding the

workings of music television and how minority musicians are treated in the world today. In

learning about the history of music television, going forward, we can be more mindful of the

musical performances we observe and how those performances are displayed for our viewing.

This critical eye will be important in continuing to discuss the problems with music television

today in hopes of creating a safer space in the television industry for musicians to occupy in the

future.
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