Word: videos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...four-minute clips, began to rain down on television and clubs in late 1980. Some of them were concert performances, shot and edited with perfunctory flash; others were like surrealistic visual riffs on the song, head comics for beginners, production numbers soaked in blotter acid. A technological catchall, video quickly became a generic name for these detonations of sight and sound, as those little items played on a phonograph were named for the way they were transcribed or recorded...
...latest count, there are 200 programs all across the country that do nothing but show rock videos. MTV is a cable network entirely given over to the playing and perpetuating of rock video, not only as a new form but as a fresh commercial force. It is the hottest basic cable operation in history...
...needs cable to see Duran Duran or Michael Jackson anymore. Duran Duran has put out a "video album." The wise fathers at Sony have issued one of their new Video 45s (cassettes with twelve to 20 minutes of playing time) featuring still more Duran Duran material. Last week a tape of Michael Jackson's exuberant Thriller video went on sale. Also on the cassette was a documentary chronicling the making of the quick flick and several scenes of Michael cavorting variously on a Motown special, through his Beat It clip and, at age eight, in front of a home...
...right, all right, it must be admitted: Michael Jackson is a special case. He may be the hottest single in show business right now. He is a supremely gifted performer, the Fred Astaire of video. But no one is too big for a video boost. Thriller, the megabit Jackson album, had already sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S. when the first video, Billie Jean, hit the clubs and the air waves. The album went on to sell more than 10 million additional copies. Jackson was on such a streak that he could, with impunity, spend an estimated...
This seems like a hefty slice of cash for what many people consider essentially a promo item, but MTV, though it gets its clips gratis, paid $250,000 for the exclusive rights to show the documentary, from which it lifted the Thriller video intact; Showtime paid $300,000 for pay-cable rights; and Vestron Video reportedly plunked down an additional $500,000 to market the cassette, in which Jackson has what the folks in business affairs call "a profit participation." Not only that, the Thriller album, already out for a year, went into the holiday season selling about...