Television has been conspicuously neglected in studies of popular music, and music has been notably absent from most accounts of television. The thought that this neglect might be significant was taken as the starting point for this special edition of the journal. Unlike some subjects (such as popular music and gender/sexuality, for example), where it is readily apparent that a number of people are busily pursuing research and where there is a history of sustained engagement in a range of related theories and debates, it was not clear initially who, if anyone, was seriously thinking about or researching the relationship between music and television. Even work on popular music and video, which once grabbed the imagination of popular music and media scholars, has faded from the academic agenda. We hoped that the call for papers might strike a chord and prompt new thoughts about this area.