Do you think MTV had a legitimate reason for racially discriminatory programming during the early years?

If you are old enough to remember when MTV actually meant Music Television and it played music videos around the clock, you probably recall that during those first few years they refused to air videos from the major black artists. I recall the claim that they had a rock format (implying that blacks did not did rock and everything that white acts did on their station was rock). Heavy rotation artists like Madonna, Culture Club, Duran Duran, and Wham were hardly rock. In fact, they were doing R&B and dance music - genres that black artists owned. Early 80s was new wave. I listened to alot of black artists that were doing that: Rick James, Cameo, Andre Cymone, BarKays, Grace Jones, Rockwell, Nona Hendryx, and of course Prince (who one of the first blacks to get into rotation along with Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie)