Two cable channels ban a country music video
Sunday, May 05, 1991. The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Two cable television channels have banned a country music video by Garth Brooks that graphically depicts domestic violence.

The Nashville Network announced Tuesday that it would not show the video for the song ''The Thunder Rolls'' and was joined Wednesday by Country Music Television, which had been broadcasting it six times a day as the hit of the week.

''TNN has standards; Garth Brooks has standards,'' said Brooks, who won six awards this year from the Academy of Country Music. ''For some crazy reason, on this occasion the two did not cross.''

TNN, available in 53 million U.S. households, decided it wouldn't broadcast the video because Brooks had refused to add a spoken message explaining the violent subject matter.

The video begins by showing a man engaged in an adulterous relati onship. Played by Brooks in heavy disguise, the man returns home to his young daughter and his anxious wife, whose face has been badly beaten.

The wife verbally and physically confronts the man and a violent fight follows in which the woman is severely beaten. The man begins to pursue his daughter up the stairs, and the wife pulls out a gun and shoots him.

Brooks said he didn't want to add the statement to the video because he didn't want to be perceived as making money off the issue of domestic violence.

Pam Lewis, Brooks' co-manager, said it was inappropriate for Brooks to add the message to the video. ''If there's a problem with the video and if TNN feels there's something they want to say about it, that's fine. If they want to run an 800 number or have someone from a woman's group possibly do some sort of video afterward, feel free. But we don't feel it's Garth's place to do it.''

Jerry Bailey, a spokesman for TNN, said: ''If Garth creates a controversial video, he needs to be willing to take responsibility for its social implications.''

CMT, which is owned by TNN but operates separately, goes into 13 million households. ''We are a music channel,'' said Bob Baker, CMT's director of operations. ''We are an entertainment medium. We are not news. We are not social issues. We are not about domestic violence, adultery and murder.''

He said the network ''went out on a limb'' and ''now we have made an equally conscious decision with the input of our viewers to pull it.''