Inside MTV

R. Serge Denisoff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351512374
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industria dei media e delle comunicazioni
• Index: Business

MTV is the third major breakthrough in music broadcasting, and the first since the late 1960s. ""Top Forty"" radio was initiated in the 1950s, and along with ""free form"" or ""progressive"" rock molded rock music exposure for nearly twenty years. Many observers credit MTV with resurrecting the music industry from the throes of the Great Depression of 1979. Few would dispute its impact on contemporary film, fashion, and radio.Inside MTV examines the world of cablecasting, the evolution of WASEC, MTV, VH-1, and some of their competitors. The strategies, personalities, promotions, and the contents that placed MTV on the road to its dominant position are described. The many controversies surrounding the channel are thoroughly detailed, and a good deal of the misinformation on the subject is corrected.It is a mere five years since MTV began as the third of four Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC) channels, created by two of America's largest conglomerates. Since then, it has become a major force. Before MTV was conceived the relationship between television and rock music was weak, at best. As the new partnership.developed, a story of genius, luck, and discrimination began to unfold, and a corporate innovation of major proportions and psychodemographic success emerged.MTV is now the most profitable 24-hour cable outlet beamed from a satellite. It reaches 30.8 million households. How all this happened is chronicled in this major new book from a leading authority on the American music business.

1 “Heartbreak Hotel”

This kid is a guitar-playing Marlon Brando.

Jack Philbin, executive producer, “Stage Show”

A New York City weatherman staring at the teleprompter read, “Increasing cloudiness and not so cold tonight. Lowest temperature 25 with a high of 30 degrees. Gentle, variable winds from the northwesterly direction.” The WNBC-TV weatherman went on to rattle off predictions for the remaining part of the weekend.

As with many elements of the Elvis legend, even the weather on the night of January 28, 1956 has been exaggerated. The liner notes to Elvis, written by an anonymous artist of puffery at the RCA publicity office, read:

Presley was facing a majority of viewers as cold and unprepared as the citizens of Siberia.

In New York very few had braved the storm. The theatre was sparsely filled with shivering servicemen and Saturday nighters, mostly eager for the refuge from the weather. Outside, groups of teenagers rushed past the marquee to a roller-skating rink nearby. Just before show time, a weary promoter returned to the box office with dozens of tickets, unable to even give them away on the streets of Times Square.

The historic night was not quite as climatically melodramatic as biographers and publicists insinuate. “Stage Show” aired at 8:00 P.M. (EST) with a temperature of 29 degrees, dropping one thermometer point an hour. However, a Siberian chill may have existed between Jackie Gleason and the CBS brass at the time. The day prior to the transformation of the ‘‘Hillbilly Cat” into ‘‘Elvis, the Pelvis,” the comedian railed at Black Rock executives about the Dorsey Brothers’ “Stage Show” time slot. Perry Como was beating this variety show lead-in to the “Honeymooners.” Como enjoyed a comfortable 32 audience share to the meager 14.9 of “Stage Show.”

Midway into the show, Elvis stood in the middle of the stage on the assigned chalk mark. Sporting an ill-fitting, off-white jacket with dark trousers, he spread his legs, shrugged the padded coat shoulders, and rotated the right knee: “Wellll. . . since mah baby left me, ah’ve found a new place to dwell. . . .” The audience not tuned to Como couldn’t believe their undersized black-and-white screen. “Heartbreak Hotel” continued. Presley’s well-rehearsed Howlin’ Wolf bump and grind, now second nature, intensified. “As Scotty came in on guitar,” recalled Jerry Hopkins, “Elvis’ legs jerked and twisted. He thumped his own guitar on the afterbeat beat, using it as a prop and almost never playing it now. He bumped his hips. He moved his legs in something that seemed a cross between a fast shuffle and a Charleston step.” The now familiar sneer at the left corner of his mouth appeared. The dark eyelids seductively began to close. Television met rock and roll and the man about to be crowned its monarch: “The King.”

Phone lines resembled Christmas Day. Teens rushed to call their friends: “Turn on . . . you won’t believe it!” For a fee of approximately $1,250 the faltering “Stage Show” outrated Perry Como for the first time. In a frequently cited quote Gleason merely said, “It was and is our opinion that Elvis would appeal to the majority of the people.”¹

Whatever the magic, it shocked and ignited those watching. Television executives, particularly at CBS, read the numbers. Gleason was pacified for a while. The media and public reactions were mixed. The handful of written accounts were negative; few critics had seen the controversial performance. Adolescents loved it, while their parents scowled. The middle-aged titans of the Golden Age of Television—Bill Paley, Frank Stanton, David Sarnoff—didn’t understand the phenomenon, but could read the “overnights.” The musical genie was out of the bottle.

Elvis and the band climbed into their ever-present Cadillac, followed by Red West and Scotty Moore, and they were allegedly greeted by unpredicted snow flurries. Symbolically the chill augured the history of a new irreverent presence on television. Some twenty-five years later, John Lack would introduce a new satellite-delivered Music Television (MTV) network uttering one sentence: “Ladies and Gentlemen! Rock and Roll!”

Note

1Hopkins, 122, 124

2 “We Are Family”

The announcement of the merger did not surprise many financial insiders on Wall Street. The September 14, 1979 press conference only served to confirm the rumors. American Express announced its intention to purchase 50 percent of the Warner Cable Corporation (WCC) for $175 million. The choice of companies may have startled some, but in light of its unsuccessful bids for Walt Disney Productions, McGraw-Hill, and others over a two-year span, the cash-heavy traveler’s-check and credit-card corporation finally was able to expand into the communications field.

The joint venture would be named Warner Amex Cable Communications (WACC). It was hoped that a $250 million credit line could be established for the new enterprise.

Cable television (CATV) since the mid-1970s and early 1980s was economically perceived as one of the growth industries—a megatrend. Warner Cable Corporation was a leader in this field. Even with competition from Group W, Cox, and American Television and Communications (ATC), the Warners subsidiary appeared filled with promise, especially the interactive QUBE hookup.

WCC surfaced in 1972 as the result of the merger of Continental, Television Communications, and the Cyprus operation. The newly formed cable chain began to expand with the acquisition local cable companies and new franchises. One of the first was a Columbus, Ohio, company that would in 1977 come to be known as the Warner QUBE two-way or “interactive system.” It received a vast amount of attention because of its ability to actually involve viewers, who could respond to what was on the screen by squeezing a button. The technology enthralled people. A more important ingredient of the Ohio cable company was its ability to produce original programs, such as “Pinwheel,” which would anchor the Nickelodeon Network.

The Star Channel, a pay-TV movie network introduced in February 1973, was part of the package. Star was different from other all-film networks in format, as it provided late-night films. Research indicated that blue-collar workers in industrial areas were very supportive of movies screened in the early hours of the morning. For decades people on the swing shift had been an ignored segment of the population when it came to television. VCRs were then in their high-priced infancy.

Originally confined to CATV operations under the WCC logo, Nickelodeon and Star were on RCAs “Cable Bird” (satellite) by April 1979—five months prior to the revelation of the proposed joint venture. WCC, at the time, had amassed some 140 MSO (Multiple Systems Operator) franchises with satellite access and production capabilities. Optimists predicted in the early 1980s that at least half of America would be “wired” by the end of the decade. Gustave M. Hauser, then chief executive officer of Warner Cable, noted: “Looking down ten years out, or five years out we see a tremendous opportunity and a great requirement for capital—as the industry goes on—to wire America.”

The chairperson of American Express, James D. Robinson, III, viewed the cable industry as being “on the leading edge of a major communications revolution in the United States. . . . [It’s] a compatible extension of our travel and entertainment-related services and gives us entry into the fast-growing, at home consumer and entertainment industry.”

Steven J. Ross, the stormy head of Warner Communications Inc. (WCI), which owned the cable division, applauded the additional capital.

The venture needed and received the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In a period of merger mania, few doubted the stated intentions of the collaborators. One analyst voiced reservations to Business Week. In light of WCF’s status in the corporate community, the observer suggested that Warners was gaining “respectability.” “Some fiduciaries wouldn’t let their clients touch the company [WCI]. But now, it’s partnered with American Express, and the link will open doors to institutions that were closed before.”

Prior to this venture the business press had been unkind to Steven Ross and the Kinney Corporation, which merged with Seven Arts to become WCI in 1969. Forbes, Fortune, and others printed rumors of organized crime connections and “squirreling away $170,000 when it had a net income . . . of $51 million in 1973.”

The Justice Department had charged that Sol Weiss had accepted $70,000 to sell stocks to Warners that contributed to the “slush fund.” A Wall Street insider noted in defense: “At the time, everyone was setting up slush funds. I don’t think there was anything done not in the interest of the stockholders.” This may have been correct, but WCI had other ghosts to tend with.

Reprise Records, part of WCI, was cofounded by Frank Sinatra, a musical phenomenon who is frequently rumored to have “mob” connections.

Alleged scandals plagued the Kinney Corporation. Ross, the president, at one time controlled a number of parking lots in the Bronx that were Kinney holdings. Steve Chappie and Reebee Garofalo in a muckraking volume suggest: “Since the Mafia has been heavily involved in New York City parking lots . . . Forbes magazine and others have speculated that Kinney and through them Warner have also been involved with organized crime.”

The frequently cited Forbes story of June 1970 supposedly implied organized crime connections; however, the business magazine actually stated: “Rumors have long circulated linking Kinney with the Mafia. Forbes has been unable to find a shred of solid evidence to support them. …” Caesar P. Kimmel, executive vice president of Kinney Corporation, whose family ties fueled the rumor, noted: “I’ve lived with this over the years—the charge that we are run by the Mafia. It just isn’t true. We don’t wear shoulder holsters. We’ve never been under the influence of any underworld group.”

On Wall Street, as elsewhere, the perception frequently is the reality. This joint enterprise of WCI and American Express put most of the innuendos to rest. Several years after the coupling, Lee Isgur of Paine Webber would tell Newsweek that WCI was “beginning to emerge as one of the major companies in America, bar none.”

Programs, “Teenvideo,” and Satellites

J. Dalton Knievel started a cable operation in Columbus, Ohio. Five hundred households originally signed up for the service in December 1971. Warner Cable then brought the system. Unlike the standard twelve-channel CATVs developed to import clear television pictures into suburban and rural regions, the Warner operation produced some of its own local pay programming. American Express’ James Robinson pointed to the QUBE system as a consideration for the joint venture: “We looked at cable for a long time and decided that a company that could generate its own programming had definite advantages over others.” Columbus, at that time, was Madison Avenue’s demographic all-American test market. The innovative cable system was touted as the wave of the future, even by PBS’s “Nova” series. This became a major selling point for WCC.

In 1976 Dr. Vivian Horner, formerly of PBS’ “Electric Company,” and producer Sandy Kavanaugh embarked on a project with a shoestring budget for the Columbus Warner cable system aimed at preschoolers. Sandy Kavanaugh said, “We had a theory but we didn’t know how we’d pull the concept together. Then we had an adrenaline day, and created ‘Pinwheel.’“ On December 1, 1977 a new cable offering, C-3, began airing from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M., seven days a week. “Pinwheel House” was, according to producer Kavanaugh, “the only complete television channel in the world geared to the diverse interests of the very young child . . . entertainment, learning, and fantasy.” “Pinwheel” included educational fare, animated films provided by the Canadian Film Board, and features from all over the globe.

“Pinwheel House” appeared to be in the “Sesame Street” genre, featuring puppets and adults focusing their activities around a mobile vegetable cart. Bradford Cody Williams, once with “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,” created the puppets. Like its PBS counterpart, the program included music, art, and mime. The “Sesame Street” comparison was difficult to shake. “Although we’ve always carried entertainment,” Geraldine Laybourne, vice president of programming, told the New York Times, “when we first came on we were heavily oriented toward educational shows. Our initial success was with preschoolers, where the adults control the dial.”

QUBE’s two-way or interactive operation went into effect the same time as “Pinwheel” debuted, with 20,000 households connected to the cable. The Columbus Dispatch heralded the new concept of “participatory programming” as changing the face of cable and “all of television.” Pollsters and merchandisers were excited as subscribers could merely press a button to register a social or political opinion, and in the future subscribers would be able to make bank transfers and directly order goods advertised on the television screen. The media coverage and plaudits were appreciated, but the operation was costing Warner Cable some $20 million in red ink.

“Pinwheel” was doing quite well in other WCC markets and became part of Nickelodeon when it expanded into a “satellite network for young people, preschoolers to early teens.” Nickelodeon went into orbit March 26, 1979. Warner Cable would continue as the “major production facility for the network,” said then general manager Columbus Nyhl Henson, supplying 20 percent of the programming.

Nickelodeon featured five programs: “Pinwheel,” “Video Comic Book,” “Nickel Flicks,” “By the Way,” and “Bananaz,” a live talk show later renamed “Livewire.” Several weeks after the initial airing, United Cable became the first non-Warners company to buy the satellite-fed service.

Vivian Horner became Warner Cable’s vice president for educational programming and Sandy Kavanaugh was named director of programming for the channel. Their new boss was John A. Lack, who had just come from CBS.

At the time of his departure Lack was slated to run WCBS-TV in New York. Several friends of Gus Hauser recommended him as a “bright young” marketing executive. WCC made him a very lucrative offer. Lack saw this as an opportunity “that was a lot bigger than I could have had at CBS at the time.”

John A. Lack joined Warner Cable on January 10, 1979 as executive vice president of programming and marketing. He would be responsible for the QUBE operation, the satellite services, Nickelodeon, Star Channel, and supervision of WCC’s 140 systems nationally.

Lack’s academic broadcasting and sales credentials are impressive. The then thirty-four-year-old native New Yorker had graduated from Boston University and earned a masters degree in broadcast journalism at Northwestern University. He studied for a doctorate at the prestigious Department of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, but did not complete it. He became a producer-director at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW-TV in Philadelphia, working with the temperamental Tom Snyder on the evening “Eyewitness News” and other projects. Group W involved Lack in the cable activities as well. Leaving Philadelphia, he assumed the position of program director of the Reeves Telecom Communications radio stations in Baltimore.

From August 28, 1970 to January 5, 1979, he was employed by CBS in various capacities, ranging from account executive (particularly radio spot sales) to vice president and general manager of WCBS (New York), an all-news station. The New York station was the most profitable of the fourteen CBS-owned radio stations. When announcing the appointment Gustave M. Hauser told Variety that one of Lack’s prime responsibilities would be to develop new directions for QUBE, Star Channel, and Nickelodeon. Jim Gray, president of Warner Amex Cable, said, “What they did was stress development.” In light of his experience, Lack was to observe, evaluate, and formulate blueprints for the future. Sales and programming were his strongest attributes. Lack, according to one former executive at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, was a conceptualizer—a man most comfortable behind a desk or in a board room. Another recalled that “he knew what he wanted, but usually got someone else to do it.”

The formal ELF biography in the media marketplace does not indicate his true interest. Fred Seibert notes: “John Lack loves music. He learned to love rock and roll growing up around the streets of New York.” Lack was part of a growing legion of white kids turned on to rhythm and blues before Presley, Domino, and Haley came to dominate the charts. Seeing Louis Lymon and the Teen Chords perform “Too Young” and “I Found Out Why” was impressive. Lack remembers: “I used to play games when I was a kid, you heard the first two seconds of a song, you had to guess the artists, the writer, the flip side, the company and the color.” Alan Freed’s four-ho...