Moments in Music History

By Diana Wittrock

Michael Nesmith's Invention of MTV

Michael Nesmith, known best for his work on the 1966 show and pop-group The Monkees, pursued all sorts of interesting career pathways throughout his life, beginning as an actor on the aforementioned television show, finagling his way into singing, songwriting, and guitar-playing, and eventually famously overthrowing Raybert Studios to possess the rights and control over the group’s musical prowess. Outside of The Monkees, he formed the country band The First National Band and founded the distribution and production company Pacific Arts. However, one of the more interesting, and frankly unrecognized pursuits of his was his invention of the iconic studio MTV.

In 1977, Island Records requested a promotional video be produced for his single “Rio,” which generated something revolutionary. Instead of recording a video of him simply performing the song, he filmed an artistic short film to accompany the story integrated in the lyrics. At this time, although music videos were being created, there was no platform for these types of videos to air for the general public to view. He notes how, in his novel, Infinite Tuesday, “Audio records are played on radio, so a video record should be played on video — on television. There should be a broadcast component for the music video just like there is for records.” With that, he proposed the idea of MTV: a program which aired music videos 24/7.

Nesmith with The Monkees - mid-1960s

"Rio" by Michael Nesmith - 1977

While many studios rejected the idea, Warner Bros. executive John Lack saw potential in the idea, comparing the concept to “a radio station.” He launched MTV partnered with American Express on August 1st, 1981, playing “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles as the first video to ever broadcast. Nesmith was asked to be the production head of the station, however he turned this offer down in order to work on more personal and creative projects.



While fairly simple, this story is especially important to me now due to the recent and tragic death of Nesmith, which occurred a little over a month ago on December 10th, 2021 at the age of 78. As more of a niche artist, I think it’s important to recognize the incredible innovations he was able to bring to the table on top of all his musical accomplishments. Without his creative intuition, we may have never had such an interesting platform to view the visualization of music which MTV has to offer.