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.

This article addresses a gap in the historical study of music on television by revisiting North American popular music in conjunction with the broadcast medium's early stage of development. Central to its analysis is the fact that music has always been deemed essential to the character and success of television. Emphasising the circulating discourses of ‘opportunity’, the article isolates the ways in which some musicians and others in various sectors of the music industry regarded the new medium as a positive influence at its inception. Among key considerations at the time were issues of musical performance style and aesthetics, repertoire, promotional capabilities, career enhancement, and additional leisure options for audiences.

Television is an essential part of the star-making machinery of the music business and music accompanies nearly all television programmes, and yet the relationship between the two is uneasy. Television does not seem to be an essential part of musical culture and adds little to music aesthetically. Music has had little impact on the form or aesthetics of television. And yet television has certainly had an impact on music and particularly on the mediation of rock and the formation of the modern pop/rock aesthetic. Here it is not music in television that is important but television in music. The 1950s was a significant turning point in popular music history not so much because of the musical revolution of rock ‘n’ roll but because of the impact of television.

Television is one of the earliest ways that children gain access to popular music. The child's early experience of both music and television does not necessarily separate out ‘music alone’ from his or her evolving musical appreciation. The co-operation of television and popular music encourage particular modes of attention and expression for the child as both viewer and listener. Movement, gesture, and the response of the body to the visual and aural cues of music-television may be seen to inform this appreciation. The child learns, feels and demonstrates that they have done so. This is guided and inspired by what they hear and see.

Boy bands embody contradictory representations of their own individuality and authenticity and the corporate nature of their genesis and presentation. Boy band members, the impresarios and entrepreneurs behind them, and the producers of television shows about them must contend in their work and relationships with the social and symbolic conventions of their historical moment. In this article I analyse representations of boy bands on the American TV shows The Monkees (1966-8) and Making the Band (2000-) in order to highlight shifts in the ways the performers and production personnel have been represented and have sought to represent themselves. The internal push for legitimacy and autonomy of the young stars of these shows, acting from within a perceived but unstable gap between ‘musician’ and ‘employee’, exists in tension with the external push of TV and music producers, network, record label and marketing departments for rational, predictable products and behaviours that fit within an overall business plan. While the rock ideology of authenticity has lost much of the force it had in the 1960s and change in representational conventions seem to indicate a general acceptance of the overt commercialism of chart-busting pop, this article shows that even within the mainstream flows a strong current of concern over issues of authenticity, legitimacy and autonomy.

Recent years have seen an increase in pop music on television, replacing its more traditional incidental music. It is now dominant as stock music on television, filling expanding continuity and advertising spaces. The licensing of pop music for screen use is increasingly important for the music industry, spawning a new form of ‘multipurpose music’ which, as well as being music in its own right, can also be resold as stock music for television. While in the 1980s there was a rush to tie-in pop music with films, in the 1990s, it increasingly was to tie pop music with television. This article documents and explores this transition.

Identifying a television channel on-air has become increasingly important in the multi-channel age. For viewers it is a navigational necessity; for broadcasting executives it contributes to corporate branding. But despite the fact that television is an audiovisual medium, the so-called channel idents which appear between programmes are almost always discussed in terms of their visual rather than their audio characteristics. This article aims to go some way to correct this imbalance in arguing that the latter have evolved in a distinctive manner. Initially borrowing the idea of the fanfare from the cinema, UK broadcasters in recent years have developed a softer style, then drawn on dance and other forms of popular music and finally employed sound effects in the production of channel idents.

This article examines the way in which music has featured in documentary films and programmes. The conventions of restrained use to cue mood and theme are explored, using examples and the recommendations of manuals. Across the varieties of documentary output, the article notes how the dominance of journalistic and observational formats has, for different reasons, tended to place music in the margins. Drawing on an example from the classic period of documentary film-making in Britain, it points towards a more expansive use of music in a complementary relationship with images. A number of general theoretical points about the specific properties of the documentary image and its relationship with music are raised and recent examples of successful innovation discussed. The article ends by suggesting that there is more scope for aesthetic development in music-image relations than has often been recognised and that some of the established inhibitions about mixing ‘fact’ with ‘emotion’ need to be reviewed.

The idea I have in mind is to compare the situation on television today and thirty years ago of what persists in being known as classical music. I write as an academic, but this will not be a normal academic paper. For one thing, I shall not do any special research but base myself instead on memory and autobiographical experience, because thirty years ago, before becoming an academic, I began by writing music criticism and making documentaries on music for television. My intention is to say something as a participant observer about the alteration of the cultural context in which this thing called classical music operates, and about the part that television has played in this.