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Re: Why it took MTV so long to play black music videos
MTV can't be considered in isolation but must be understood against the backdrop of what was happening on TV and in magazines at the time. This gives a good summary. I will bold and place in blue print the early shows that had black people.
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<span style="font-weight: bold">CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; An Evolving Vision In Black and White </span>
The three corporate moguls staring out from the cover of Newsweek last week were sternly conventional: dark suits, light shirts, conservative ties, close-cropped hair. Clearly Masters of the Universe, these newly appointed chief executives of Merrill Lynch, AOL Time Warner and American Express are remarkable-looking in only one way: they're all African-American.
Surely this is a sign that the world is hugely different than it was 50 years ago, when Eddie Cantor put his arm around Sammy Davis Jr. on a television variety show, an interracial gesture that instigated a wave of hate mail directed at Colgate toothpaste, the show's sponsor. Or than it was when the producer of ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Nat 'King' Cole Show</span></span>'' was dressed down by an NBC executive who told him, ''Nat is a Negro and most of these musicians are white and it looks like the white guys are working for a Negro.''
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Ancient history -- or not? At the same time that the African-American titans appeared in stone-faced power poses on Newsweek, USA Today carried a report that not a single black or Hispanic can be found among the nation's governors or in the United States Senate.
Television reflects this dichotomy, and not just during Black History Month in February, with its onslaught of race-related programming. Yes, things have changed since Dick Gregory, on ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Steve Allen Show</span></span>,'' taunted the audience: ''Don't clap for me. Just take me to lunch when it's not Brotherhood Week.''
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With its distortion of reality, television may be a fun-house mirror, but it has also proved to be a reliable reflection of certain cultural verities. The medium has played a crucial part in shaping public perception of African-Americans, even as black performers have influenced the direction of television. </div></div>
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When Nichelle Nichols, playing Lieutenant Uhura on the original ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">Star Trek</span></span>,'' wanted to leave the show because she was stressed out, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged her to stay. He recognized the symbolic importance, in the 1960's, of having a strong black woman appear on a television drama. Throughout the early days of television, recalls Maya Angelou, the poet and a star of ''Roots,'' ''you saw somebody black on television, you just ran to see who it was.''
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Old bugaboos are given a revisionist spin in ''Inside TV Land.'' ''<span style="color: #000066"><span style="font-weight: bold">Amos 'n' Andy</span></span>,'' the radio vaudeville act that became a television hit in the early 1950's, was also widely reviled by civil rights groups, whose members called the characters offensive stereotypes. But with greater diversity on television has come more tolerance for shtick and less concern that a particular characterization might reflect badly on an entire race. So while Julian Bond, the civil rights leader, expresses continued disdain for ''Amos 'n' Andy,'' </div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
It had been white night throughout the early years of television, with black performers appearing mainly as accent notes on variety shows or as comic characters in series. Occasionally, in the 1950's, a serious black actor like Ossie Davis or Sidney Poitier was featured in such theatrical showcases as <span style="color: #000066"><span style="font-weight: bold">''The Philco Television Playhouse</span></span>,'' carrying a double burden, dramatic and symbolic.
''Sidney had such a weight to carry to be the first black actor to achieve what he did in this town,'' says Diahann Carroll, with special empathy. Ms. Carroll starred in ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">Julia</span></span>,'' a 1968 sitcom about a single black mother who was a nurse. The show dealt with racial prejudice, but in a jaunty, sitcom way that drew fire for having a heroine who was too assimilated into the white world.
Inevitably, a populist medium like television invites backlashes with every breakthrough -- even the breakthroughs that seem almost impossibly mundane in retrospect, as when Cicely Tyson unnerved people by wearing her hair in an Afro on <span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">''East Side/West Side</span></span>,'' a 1963 drama starring George C. Scott as a New York social worker. (Ms. Tyson played his secretary.)
A few years later Bill Cosby radicalized television simply by being cool and debonair on ''I Spy,'' an equal partner with co-star Robert Culp. In the 1980's, in ''The Cosby Show,'' Mr. Cosby was a more racially explicit hero as Cliff Huxtable, a physician and a family man married to a lawyer. The Huxtables were familiar to everyone who watched, but especially recognizable to African-Americans, who connected to the show's subtle yet thorough reflection of upper-middle-class black life.
''Inside TV Land'' addresses the cynicism of network programming after the civil rights movement made it fashionable to more fully integrate television. When the political humor on ''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'' became too pointed, CBS canceled it, despite strong ratings, and replaced it with <span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">''The Leslie Uggams Show</span></span>,'' a lightweight variety program. ''What better way to shut everybody's mouth than to bring a little chocolate bunny on to have her own show,'' recalls Ms. Uggams ruefully. ''We were just there to take the heat off the fire.''
When television began, official racial segregation was sanctioned in many states, and having a black actress play a maid on television was considered, among African-Americans, both an insult and a coup. Now, blacks run some of the heftiest corporations in the United States</div></div>
Leslie Uggams was a regular on "Mitch Miller". Rochester , an embarrassing Black character on the Jack Benny Show was played by Eddie Anderson. I've already "Wild, Wild West", "I Spy" and Mission Impossible as programmes that regularly had Black performers.
MTV can't be considered in isolation but must be understood against the backdrop of what was happening on TV and in magazines at the time. This gives a good summary. I will bold and place in blue print the early shows that had black people.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
<span style="font-weight: bold">CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; An Evolving Vision In Black and White </span>
The three corporate moguls staring out from the cover of Newsweek last week were sternly conventional: dark suits, light shirts, conservative ties, close-cropped hair. Clearly Masters of the Universe, these newly appointed chief executives of Merrill Lynch, AOL Time Warner and American Express are remarkable-looking in only one way: they're all African-American.
Surely this is a sign that the world is hugely different than it was 50 years ago, when Eddie Cantor put his arm around Sammy Davis Jr. on a television variety show, an interracial gesture that instigated a wave of hate mail directed at Colgate toothpaste, the show's sponsor. Or than it was when the producer of ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Nat 'King' Cole Show</span></span>'' was dressed down by an NBC executive who told him, ''Nat is a Negro and most of these musicians are white and it looks like the white guys are working for a Negro.''
</div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Ancient history -- or not? At the same time that the African-American titans appeared in stone-faced power poses on Newsweek, USA Today carried a report that not a single black or Hispanic can be found among the nation's governors or in the United States Senate.
Television reflects this dichotomy, and not just during Black History Month in February, with its onslaught of race-related programming. Yes, things have changed since Dick Gregory, on ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">The Steve Allen Show</span></span>,'' taunted the audience: ''Don't clap for me. Just take me to lunch when it's not Brotherhood Week.''
</div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
With its distortion of reality, television may be a fun-house mirror, but it has also proved to be a reliable reflection of certain cultural verities. The medium has played a crucial part in shaping public perception of African-Americans, even as black performers have influenced the direction of television. </div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
When Nichelle Nichols, playing Lieutenant Uhura on the original ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">Star Trek</span></span>,'' wanted to leave the show because she was stressed out, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged her to stay. He recognized the symbolic importance, in the 1960's, of having a strong black woman appear on a television drama. Throughout the early days of television, recalls Maya Angelou, the poet and a star of ''Roots,'' ''you saw somebody black on television, you just ran to see who it was.''
</div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Old bugaboos are given a revisionist spin in ''Inside TV Land.'' ''<span style="color: #000066"><span style="font-weight: bold">Amos 'n' Andy</span></span>,'' the radio vaudeville act that became a television hit in the early 1950's, was also widely reviled by civil rights groups, whose members called the characters offensive stereotypes. But with greater diversity on television has come more tolerance for shtick and less concern that a particular characterization might reflect badly on an entire race. So while Julian Bond, the civil rights leader, expresses continued disdain for ''Amos 'n' Andy,'' </div></div>
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
It had been white night throughout the early years of television, with black performers appearing mainly as accent notes on variety shows or as comic characters in series. Occasionally, in the 1950's, a serious black actor like Ossie Davis or Sidney Poitier was featured in such theatrical showcases as <span style="color: #000066"><span style="font-weight: bold">''The Philco Television Playhouse</span></span>,'' carrying a double burden, dramatic and symbolic.
''Sidney had such a weight to carry to be the first black actor to achieve what he did in this town,'' says Diahann Carroll, with special empathy. Ms. Carroll starred in ''<span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">Julia</span></span>,'' a 1968 sitcom about a single black mother who was a nurse. The show dealt with racial prejudice, but in a jaunty, sitcom way that drew fire for having a heroine who was too assimilated into the white world.
Inevitably, a populist medium like television invites backlashes with every breakthrough -- even the breakthroughs that seem almost impossibly mundane in retrospect, as when Cicely Tyson unnerved people by wearing her hair in an Afro on <span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">''East Side/West Side</span></span>,'' a 1963 drama starring George C. Scott as a New York social worker. (Ms. Tyson played his secretary.)
A few years later Bill Cosby radicalized television simply by being cool and debonair on ''I Spy,'' an equal partner with co-star Robert Culp. In the 1980's, in ''The Cosby Show,'' Mr. Cosby was a more racially explicit hero as Cliff Huxtable, a physician and a family man married to a lawyer. The Huxtables were familiar to everyone who watched, but especially recognizable to African-Americans, who connected to the show's subtle yet thorough reflection of upper-middle-class black life.
''Inside TV Land'' addresses the cynicism of network programming after the civil rights movement made it fashionable to more fully integrate television. When the political humor on ''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'' became too pointed, CBS canceled it, despite strong ratings, and replaced it with <span style="color: #000099"><span style="font-weight: bold">''The Leslie Uggams Show</span></span>,'' a lightweight variety program. ''What better way to shut everybody's mouth than to bring a little chocolate bunny on to have her own show,'' recalls Ms. Uggams ruefully. ''We were just there to take the heat off the fire.''
When television began, official racial segregation was sanctioned in many states, and having a black actress play a maid on television was considered, among African-Americans, both an insult and a coup. Now, blacks run some of the heftiest corporations in the United States</div></div>
Leslie Uggams was a regular on "Mitch Miller". Rochester , an embarrassing Black character on the Jack Benny Show was played by Eddie Anderson. I've already "Wild, Wild West", "I Spy" and Mission Impossible as programmes that regularly had Black performers.
, John Singleton ("Remember the Time," which featured cameos by Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson), Spike Lee ("They Don't Care About Us"
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