March 10, 1983 –
Despite the production value and Michael Jackson’s star quality, MTV didn’t play the video Billie Jean until the song was already a #1 hit. Les Garland, who ran the network at the time, claims that they loved the video and played it as soon as they could, but interviews with executives at Jackson’s record company and with others familiar with the matter suggest otherwise.
In the book I Want My MTV, multiple sources who worked at MTV claimed that the network wanted to air the Beat It video first, because Eddie Van Halen played on it and the song fit their format. Walter Yetnikoff, who was head of CBS Records (Jackson’s was signed to its subsidiary, Epic), recalls threatening to pull all CBS videos from MTV if they didn’t play Billie Jean. He says he threatened to bring Jackson’s producer Quincy Jones in on it as well, and the network acquiesced. MTV broadcasted the video of Michael Jackson’s song Billie Jean for the first time, on this date.
When MTV started playing the clip, it was first put in medium rotation, then promoted to heavy rotation when viewers loved it. The video for this song is often credited with breaking the color barrier on MTV. When the video for Beat It was delivered, that one also went into hot rotation. For a two-month stretch in the summer of 1983, both videos were getting constant airplay, establishing Jackson as a video star. His next video effort was for Thriller, which revolutionized the form.
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