Sex, Ads & Rock 'n Roll - Some Social Effects of MTV in Europe

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Sociology - Media, Art, Music, grade: 2,0 (B), University of Amsterdam (International School for Humanities and Social Sciences), language: English, abstract: This paper is about the Social Effects of MTV (Music Television) in Europe. I will try to give an overview about the development of MTV in the US more than 20 years ago and its effects on the European modern society, especially concerning globalisation, the intimidation of sexism and racism and the spread of capitalism and its impacts. The headlines of the chapters are taken from popular music songs whose video clips were played on MTV. 1. Video Killed the Radio Star -The concept and developme nt of MTV Music Television (MTV) was born on the 01. st of August 1981, at 12.01 AM EST. The delivery was broadcasted on 225 cable systems in the United Stats of America reaching 2.1 million households. The first host to be seen on the MTV screen was the former New York Radio DJ Mark Goodman 1 . He welcomed the audience with the song 'Video Killed the Radio Star' by Buggles. The title of this first video clip was the war whoop that MTV cried out in order to start its march of victory through the global media and the purses of its young peer group. Rock music had been around in America for 27 years until MTV was founded 2 . Now this music was not only audible anymore but became visible. MTV provided its recipients with video clips 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The channel shows approximately ten to twelve videos per hour 3 . Its announcers rarely mention the time of the day between the video clips and the flashy and glitzy music videos are only interrupted for commercials or one of the entertaining MTV shows as 'Jackass', 'Beavis and Buthead' or the 'MTV News', which mainly report information about stars or entertaining business. MTVs '5 minute rule' says that if a recipient does not like the actual video or music type, he or she can be sure that in 5 minutes something else will be on the screen.