Pittman's boss, Warner executive vice president John Lack, had shepherded PopClips, a TV series created by Monkee-turned-solo-artist Michael Nesmith, whose attention has turned to the music video format in the late 1970s. He tested the format by producing and hosting a 15-minute show, Album Tracks, on New York City's WNBC-TV in the late 1970s. Pittman, later president and CEO of MTV Networks. MTV's original format was created by media executive Robert W.

In 1974, Gary Van Haas, vice president of Televak Corporation, created Music Video TV, a channel with video disc jockeys, to be shown in record stores across the United States, and promoted it to distributors and retailers in a May 1974 issue of Billboard. By mid-1968, Charlatan had already completed forty films for fifteen record companies, for artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Animals, Steppenwolf, Aretha Franklin, Richie Havens, The Who, The Rascals, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Connie Francis, The Cowsills, and Ricky Nelson. Under Rounds’ leadership, and on contract to record companies, Charlatan produced the short, song-length promo films and then distributed them on videotape to TV stations around the country. Tom Rounds, former program director for San Francisco Top 40 radio station KFRC, was brought on board later in 1967 as Charlatan president.

Charlatan was founded by filmmakers Peter Gardiner and Allen Daviau, both of whom were special effects producers that year for the film, The Trip. In 1967, a Los Angeles company called Charlatan Productions began producing promotional films for rock groups, with a unique approach that involved interpreting individual songs by crafting original scripts and artistic scenarios to match. Their 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, and particularly its performance of the song ' Can't Buy Me Love', led MTV to later honor the film's director Richard Lester with an award for 'basically inventing the music video'.

The Beatles used music videos to promote their records starting in the mid-1960s. Ideas for music television began in the 1960s. See also: Music video § History and development, and Music television

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