Why videos are losing their edge

Back in the olden days, when VCR machines took up half the living room and remote controls were deemed so cutting-edge your parents were afraid of them, rock videos reigned supreme. You barely had half-a-chord together - but the video was already a masterpiece. Bands with notoriously terrible hairstyles competed for tackiest-video awards. Embarrassment knew no bounds, and there was no limit to what it all might cost.

Throughout the 1980s record companies were in awe of what they regarded as the power of the video to sell a song, and accordingly invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in their more successful bands' videos.

Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody video, made in 1975, is generally considered to be the first to make any significant impression. But back in those days your only outlet was the likes of Top of the Pops. When MTV started broadcasting in America, the impact on the pop world was phenomenal. As it spread across Europe, competitors in the form of programmes such as Channel 4's Chart Show (and quite some time later, Network 2's 2TV) appeared.

The competition to get videos shown was fierce. At times this gave rise to ground-breaking stuff like Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer (1986); but more often than not musicians found themselves conforming to cringy standard formulas, which ensured air play. For those who could afford it, videos became an art form in their own right. The likes of Thriller by Michael Jackson (1983) were conceived as mini-films; bands like U2 hooked up with respected directors such as Wim Wenders.

But now, almost 20 years after the advent of MTV, the age of the video is on the wane. The Chart Show has been axed and MTV's popularity is declining. British record companies are slashing video budgets. In this month's Q magazine, Emma Davis, who commissions videos for Island Records, says: "At Island we've cut our budget by a third in the last 12 months. All the major labels have frozen their spending." Record companies, it seems, are focusing what's left on their big acts and handing out the last few quid to everyone else.

MTV has tightened its US play list to concentrate on teen pop, R&B and hip hop, making it even more difficult for rock bands to justify high expenditure on videos. But at the end of the day, it's not all about money - it's the idea that counts. Maybe financial constraints will push creative skills to the max and the result will be increasingly ingenious videos which transcend the limitations of budgets, giving rise to a plethora of timeless classics. Maybe . . .