'I Want My MTV' - Studying Music Videos in the Classroom

RECORDS, tapes and radio are central to adolescent experience and a key part is MTV - musical television - and its staple, the music video clip. 'MTV' itself is a 24-hour, non-stop, commercial cable television channel, beamed by satellite across the United States; devoted to screening rock videos.
Putting music and film together is, of course, hardly new, but the combination took off in the 1980s with the advent of cable television, along with dramatic advances in what was technically possible in television/video. The ubiquity of MTV and music videos is now a major cultural phenomenon. 'MTV' itself is enormously popular and profitable, and has fueled the current boom in the American recording industry.