The channel has been a target of criticism by different groups about programming choices, social issues,
political correctness, sensitivity, censorship, and a perceived negative
social influence on young people. Portions of the content of MTV's programs and productions have come under controversy in the general news media and among
social groups that have taken offense. Some within the music industry criticized what they saw as MTV's homogenization of rock 'n' roll, including the punk band the
Dead Kennedys, whose song "M.T.V.Get Off the Air" was released on their 1985 album
Frankenchrist, just as MTV's influence over the music industry was being solidified. MTV was also the major influence on the growth of music videos during the 1980s.
Breaking the "color barrier" During MTV's first few years, very few black artists were featured. The select few in MTV's rotation between 1981 and 1984 were
Michael Jackson,
Prince,
Eddy Grant,
Tina Turner,
Donna Summer,
Joan Armatrading,
Musical Youth,
The Specials,
The Selecter,
Grace Jones,
John Butcher and
Herbie Hancock.
Mikey Craig of
Culture Club,
Joe Leeway of
Thompson Twins and
Tracy Wormworth of
The Waitresses were also black. The Specials, which included black and white vocalists and musicians, were also the first act with people of color to perform on MTV; their song "Rat Race" was the 58th video on the station's first broadcast day. MTV refused other black artists' videos, such as
Rick James' "
Super Freak", because they did not fit the channel's carefully selected
album-oriented rock format at the time. The exclusion enraged James, who publicly advocated the addition of more black artists to the channel.
David Bowie also questioned MTV's lack of black artists during an on-air interview with VJ
Mark Goodman in 1983. MTV's original head of talent and acquisition, Carolyn B. Baker, who was black, questioned why the definition of music had to be so narrow, as did a few others outside the network. Years later, Baker said, "The party line at MTV was that we weren't playing black music because of the research – but the research was based on ignorance… We were young, we were cutting-edge. We didn't have to be on the cutting edge of racism." Nevertheless, it was Baker who rejected Rick James' "Super Freak" video "because there were half-naked women in it, and it was a piece of crap. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV." The network's director of music programming, Buzz Brindle, told an interviewer in 2006: "MTV was originally designed to be a rock music channel. It was difficult for MTV to find African American artists whose music fit the channel's format that leaned toward rock at the outset." Writers Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum noted that the channel "aired videos by plenty of white artists who didn't play rock." Andrew Goodwin later wrote: "[MTV] denied racism, on the grounds that it merely followed the rules of the rock business." MTV senior executive vice president
Les Garland complained decades later, "The worst thing was that 'racism' bullshit... there were hardly any videos being made by black artists. Record companies weren't funding them.
They never got charged with racism." However, critics of that defence pointed out that record companies were not funding videos for black artists because they knew they would have difficulty persuading MTV to play them. The book
The Vault: The Definitive Guide to the Musical World of Prince, which was co-written by the artist, states that while Bob Pittman had defined the channel’s focus as “strictly rock and roll”, the network nevertheless picked up the video to Prince’s “
1999” on December 16, 1982. In celebrating the 40th anniversary of the network's launch in 2021, current MTV Entertainment Group president Chris McCarthy acknowledged that "(o)ne of the bigger mistakes in the early years was not playing enough diverse music... but the nice thing that I've always learned at MTV is we have no problem owning our mistakes, quickly correcting them and trying to do the right thing and always follow where the audience is going." Before 1983, Michael Jackson also struggled for MTV airtime. To resolve the struggle and finally "break the color barrier", the president of
CBS Records,
Walter Yetnikoff, denounced MTV in a strong, profane statement, threatening to take away its right to play any of the label's music. However, Les Garland, then acquisitions head, said he decided to air Jackson's "
Billie Jean" video without pressure from CBS, , whose discography included music videos such as "
Beat It", "
Billie Jean", and "
Thriller" According to
The Austin Chronicle, Jackson's video for the song "Billie Jean" was "the video that broke the color barrier, even though the channel itself was responsible for erecting that barrier in the first place." But change was not immediate. "Billie Jean" was not added to MTV's "medium rotation" playlist (two to three airings per day) until it reached No. 1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart. In the final week of March, it was in "heavy rotation", one week before the MTV debut of Jackson's "
Beat It" video. Prince's "
Little Red Corvette" joined both videos in heavy rotation at the end of April. At the beginning of June, "
Electric Avenue" by Eddy Grant joined "Billie Jean," which was still in heavy rotation until mid-June. At the end of August, "
She Works Hard for the Money" by Donna Summer was in heavy rotation on the channel. Herbie Hancock's "
Rockit" and
Lionel Richie's "
All Night Long" were placed in heavy rotation at the end of October and the beginning of November respectively. In the final week of November, Donna Summer's "
Unconditional Love" was in heavy rotation. When Jackson's
elaborate video for "
Thriller" was released late that year, raising the bar for what a video could be, the network's support for it was total; subsequently, more pop and R&B videos were played on MTV. Following Jackson's and Prince's breakthroughs on MTV, Rick James did several interviews where he brushed off the accomplishment as
tokenism, saying in a 1983 interview, in an episode of
Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus on James, that "any black artist that [had] their video played on MTV should pull their [videos] off MTV."
Subsequent concepts HBO also had a 30-minute program of music videos called
Video Jukebox, that first aired around the time of MTV's launch and lasted until late 1986. Also around this time, HBO, as well as other premium channels such as
Cinemax,
Showtime and
The Movie Channel, occasionally played one or a few music videos between movies.
SuperStation WTBS launched
Night Tracks on June 3, 1983, with up to 14 hours of music video airplay each late night weekend by 1985. Its most noticeable difference was that black artists that MTV initially ignored received airplay. The program ran until the end of May 1992.
Playboy TV launched their own music video program called "Playboy's Hot Rocks" that premiered on July 15, 1983, featuring uncensored versions of music videos that were shown in nightclubs by artists from Duran Duran and Mötley Crüe to Nine Inch Nails and 2Pac. At times, they would do a certain theme like the all
Prince theme on the channel back in the 90s. A few markets also launched music-only channels, including Las Vegas' KRLR-TV (now
KSNV), which debuted in the summer of 1984 and was branded as "Vusic 21". The first video played on that channel was "Video Killed the Radio Star", following in the footsteps of MTV. Shortly after TBS began
Night Tracks,
NBC launched a music video program called
Friday Night Videos, which was considered network television's answer to MTV. Later renamed simply
Friday Night, the program ran from 1983 to 2002. ABC's contribution to the music video program genre in 1984,
ABC Rocks, was far less successful, lasting only a year. TBS founder
Ted Turner started the
Cable Music Channel in 1984, designed to play a broader mix of music videos than MTV's rock format allowed. But after one month as a money-losing venture, Turner sold it to MTV, who redeveloped the channel into VH1. The founders of
Financial News Network, Glenn Taylor and Karen Tyler tried to capitalize on the concept by launching Discovery Music Network, which was set to be a cable network, and has plans to set up the Discovery Broadcasting System, which consists of the aforementioned network, along with computer and business networks, but it never got off the ground. Shortly after its launch,
Disney Channel aired a program called
DTV, a play on the MTV acronym. The program used music cuts, both from past and upcoming artists. Instead of music videos, the program used clips of various vintage
Disney cartoons and animated films (from
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to
The Fox and the Hound) to go with the songs. The program aired in multiple formats, sometimes between shows, sometimes as its own program, and other times as one-off specials. The specials tended to air both on the Disney Channel and
NBC. The program aired at several times between 1984 and 1999. In 2009, Disney Channel revived the
DTV concept with a new series of short-form segments called
Re-Micks.
Hanna-Barbera created
HBTV, similar to
DTV in 1985 and in 1986.
Censorship MTV has edited a number of music videos to remove nudity, references to drugs, sex, violence, weapons, racism,
homophobia, and/or advertising. Many music videos aired on the channel were either censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel. In the 1980s, parent media watchdog groups such as the
Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) criticized MTV over certain music videos that were claimed to have explicit imagery of
satanism. As a result, MTV developed a strict policy on refusal to air videos that may depict Satanism or
anti-religious themes. This policy led MTV to ban music videos such as "
Jesus Christ Pose" by
Soundgarden in 1991 and "
Megalomaniac" by
Incubus in 2004;
Trademark suit Magyar Televízió, Hungary's public broadcaster who has a trademark on the initials
MTV, registered with the Hungarian copyright office, sued the American MTV (Music Television) network for trademark infringement when the Hungarian version of the music channel was launched in 2007. In 2008 according to the final verdict of the Hungarian Metropolitan Regional Court, although the national public broadcaster and the American entertainment station are identified by the same brand name in the same market, consumers couldn't confuse those TV channels. The two channels appear with the same label in public, but the services of the public broadcaster and the commercial channel cannot be compared either content-wise or stylistically.
Andrew Dice Clay During the
1989 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony, comedian
Andrew Dice Clay did his usual "adult nursery rhymes" routine (which he had done in his stand-up acts), after which the network executives imposed a lifetime ban.
Billy Idol's music video for the song "
Cradle of Love" originally had scenes from Clay's film
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane when it was originally aired; scenes from the film were later excised. During the
2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Clay was in attendance where he confirmed that the channel lifted the ban.
Beavis and Butt-Head In the wake of controversy that involved a child burning down his house after allegedly watching
Beavis and Butt-head, MTV moved the show from its original 7 p.m. time slot to an 11p.m. time slot. Also, Beavis's tendency to flick a lighter and
yell "fire" was removed from new episodes, and controversial scenes were removed from existing episodes before their rebroadcast. Some extensive edits were noted by series creator
Mike Judge after compiling his
Collection DVDs, saying that "some of those episodes may not even exist actually in their original form."
Dude, This Sucks A pilot for a show called
Dude, This Sucks was cancelled after teens attending a taping at the
Snow Summit Ski Resort in January 2001 were sprayed with liquidized fecal matter by a group known as "The Shower Rangers". The teens later sued, with MTV later apologizing and ordering the segment's removal.
Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show After
Viacom's purchase of
CBS, MTV was selected to produce the
Super Bowl XXXV halftime show in 2001, airing on
CBS and featuring
Britney Spears,
NSYNC, and
Aerosmith. Due to its success, MTV was invited back to produce another halftime show in 2004; this sparked a nationwide debate and controversy that drastically changed Super Bowl halftime shows, MTV's programming, and radio censorship. When CBS aired
Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, MTV was again chosen to produce the halftime show, with performances by such artists as
Nelly,
P. Diddy,
Janet Jackson, and
Justin Timberlake. The show became controversial, however, after Timberlake tore off part of Jackson's outfit while performing "
Rock Your Body" with her, revealing her right breast. All involved parties apologized for the incident, and Timberlake referred to the incident as a "
wardrobe malfunction".
Michael Powell, then-chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ordered an investigation the day after the broadcast. In September 2004, the FCC ruled that the halftime show was indecent and fined CBS $550,000. The FCC upheld it in 2006, but federal judges reversed the fine in 2008.
Nipplegate Timberlake and Jackson's controversial event gave way to a "wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era". After the sudden event, names surfaced such as
nipplegate, Janet moment, and
boobgate, and this spread politically, furthering the discussion into the 2004 presidential election surrounding "
moral values" and "media decency". Jeanette Kedas, an MTV network executive, called the PTC report "unfair and inaccurate" and "underestimating young people's intellect and level of sophistication", while
L. Brent Bozell III, then-president of the PTC, stated: "the incessant sleaze on MTV presents the most compelling case yet for consumer cable choice", referring to the practice of pay television companies to allow consumers to pay for channels
à la carte. In April 2008, PTC released
The Rap on Rap, a study covering hip-hop and R&B music videos rotated on programs
106 & Park and
Rap City, both shown on
BET, and
Sucker Free on MTV. PTC urged advertisers to withdraw sponsorship of those programs, whose videos PTC stated targeted children and teenagers containing adult content.
Jersey Shore MTV received significant criticism from Italian American organizations for
Jersey Shore, which premiered in 2009. The controversy was due in large part to the manner in which MTV marketed the show, as it liberally used the word "
guido" to describe the cast members. The word "guido" is generally regarded as an
ethnic slur when referring to Italians and Italian Americans. One promotion stated that the show was to follow, "eight of the hottest, tannest, craziest Guidos," while yet another advertisement stated, "
Jersey Shore exposes one of the tri-state area's most misunderstood species ... the GUIDO. Yes, they really do exist! Our Guidos and Guidettes will move into the ultimate beach house rental and indulge in everything the
Seaside Heights, New Jersey scene has to offer." Prior to the series debut,
Unico National formally requested that MTV cancel the show. In a formal letter, the company called the show a "direct, deliberate and disgraceful attack on Italian Americans." Unico National President Andre DiMino said, "MTV has festooned the 'bordello-like' house set with Italian flags and red, white and green maps of New Jersey while every other cutaway shot is of Italian signs and symbols. They are blatantly as well as subliminally bashing Italian Americans with every technique possible." Around this time, other Italian organizations joined the fight, including the NIAF and the
Order Sons of Italy in America. MTV responded by issuing a press release which stated in part, "The Italian American cast takes pride in their ethnicity. We understand that this show is not intended for every audience and depicts just one aspect of youth culture." Despite the loss of certain advertisers, MTV did not cancel the show. Moreover, the show saw its audience increase from its premiere in 2009, and continued to place as MTV's top-rated programs during ''Jersey Shore's'' six-season run, ending in 2012. == Social activism ==