The Monkees most lucrative venture the three had ever seen in their days as the Monkees, far surpassing the money they had made in the 1960s. Nesmith had little financial need to join in Monkees-related projects, mostly as his mother Bette Nesmith Graham was the inventor of Liquid Paper, leaving Nesmith an inheritance of over $25 million upon her death in 1980. A new album by the touring trio, "Pool It!" (the Monkees' tenth), appeared the following year and was a moderate success. From 1986 to 1989, the Monkees would conduct major concert tours in the United States, Australia, Japan, and Europe.
Michael Nesmith which helped spur Nesmith's creation of a television program called "PopClips" for the Nickelodeon cable network. In 1980, "PopClips" was sold to the Time Warner/Amex consortium. Time Warner/Amex developed "PopClips" into the MTV network. Nesmith won the first-ever Grammy Award given for (Long-form) Music-Video in 1982, for his hour-long "Elephant Parts" and also had a short-lived series on NBC inspired by the video called "Michael Nesmith in Television Parts". "Television Parts" included many other artists who were unknown at the time but went on to become major stars in their own right. Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Whoopi Goldberg,