[tomhoward]

Night Flight was on Weekends around midnight

I guess the point is that Countdown in Australia and Top of the Pops in the UK were prime time and very mainstream.

In Australia then there were only four TV channels (with no subscription TV), and Countdown on Saturday evening was the thing that most kids/teenagers watched, in many cases with their parents. And without even many music radio stations operating, it was a primary way people discovered new music, and it was a hugely influential program.

A lot of artists we remember as the biggest bands of the late 70s and 80s – e.g., Blondie, ABBA, John Mellencamp, Meat Loaf, Boz Scaggs and Cyndi Lauper – had their first chart success anywhere in the world in Australia, thanks to being played on Countdown. Politicians would go on there when campaigning. Prince Charles even appeared in a famously bad interview.

[pm215]

Wasn't Top of The Pops all film of the bands in a studio live/miming-over-a-recording, though? I don't see how that would provide a head-start for producing music videos...

[darrenf]

> Wasn't Top of The Pops all film of the bands in a studio live/miming-over-a-recording, though?

Not at all. There were videos being shown at least as far back as 1979 (around when I can vaguely remember first seeing the show). From a cursory search, here's a Thin Lizzy video from June that year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnkHDtqpETE&t=905s

[tomhoward]

I don't know! If it was, it strengthens my point.

Others seemed to be trying to refute my original comments by saying that Top of the Pops had been running for years before Countdown, but if it was just showing mimed live performances rather than concept videos, then my original assertion that AU/NZ had a head start is solid after all.

Edit: As a sibling commenter pointed out, a video Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was shown in 1975, and The Beatles had already made the Yellow Submarine movie, so yep, artists in the UK were certainly experimenting with the medium.

But it seems both the UK and Australia were a bit ahead of music video being a big thing in the US.

[Reason077]

Yes, but they also played music videos:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops#Music_videos