Does FM have any African American fans?

[Dreamz19]

Originally Posted by SteveMacD

The only problem is that that's not exactly true. Fleetwood Mac's videos got lots of play on MTV. "Little Lies" even topped the MTV video charts. It was an MTV special that brought the classic Fleetwood Mac back. Solo Stevie, Don Henley, Glen Frey, Tom Petty, the Traveling Wilburys, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Genesis, etc, all were in heavy rotation.

As for black artists on MTV, I think "Thriller" is still considered the most successful video of all time. I watched a lot of MTV, and I never really thought they had a racial diversity deficit. Look at the mainstream success of hip hop. You don't think Yo! MTV Raps! had anything to do with that?

MTV can be partially blamed for the downfall of popular music to some extent, but I think MTV actually did more to narrow the racial divide in the culture of music than not.

Originally Posted by redbird

Because the author implied that Lindsey's and Stevie's solo careers followed, I assume she is talking specifically about the early 80's. In the early 80's it was definitely a recognized criticism of MTV that they did not play many black artists:

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So it seems to me like it was definitely a struggle to get MTV to respect black artists initially. And even once Michael Jackson changed that, it could still have been in the memories of audiences and artists alike. MTV helped once black artists stood up for themselves and demanded better treatment.

You're correct Redbird. Quincy Jones and Micheal Jackson spoke about having issues getting MTV to play MJ's videos in the early 80s. Quincy did an interview right after Micheal died and talked about it again. MTV's resistance to showing more black artist is one of the reasons BET started showing music videos in the early 80s. As for Yo MTV Raps, that show premiered in the late 80s and by then MTV had changed their views. So when it comes to what happened in the late 80s, I agree with Steve that MTV did help to bring hip hop mainstream.