Eldergays, Let’s Talk About MTV

Second music video to be played on MTV

Original MTV theme song.

Very rock.

The best commercial ever!

Maybe the most important MTV moment in history

I remember when I found the guy from “True Life” who got calf implants had become a gay porn star

Daria

Beavis and Butt-Head

Downtown Julie Brown

Andy and Joel in Undressed

headbanger's ball

Ironic that MTV no longer has anything whatsoever to do with music.

Celebrity Deathmatch

Aaliyah’s Diary episode where she talks about her legacy and also when she talks about having a reoccurring dream where she’s flying after drowning.

Kurt Loder! Crazy how he’s been forgotten when he was there for decades.

Like A Virgin

The first Kanye moment when everyone started to see something was wrong.

2009 was the last crazy MTV Award show

Somebody needs to take him out R16.

R5 Also when Dunbar from Road Rules did porn for Playboy.

Mariah having a manic episode on TRL

Diana feeling up Lil’ Kim

Prince with his ass out

R11 I’m 35.

I think by the 90’s when I was growing up they had moved to non-music video programs like “Daria” and “Singled Out” while mixing it with artist based shows and music video countdowns.

I think MTV2 started around 2000 / 2001 because people were complaining about the lack of music videos even back then.

But I felt like for me MTV had a convenient balance. I would wake up and watch music videos with my breakfast before school, and then I’d come home and watch the TV shows and then when I was going to bed, I’d watch music videos.

I don’t know when they got rid of music videos. I think as MTV2 grew. But I don’t think MTV2 plays music videos anymore.

I haven’t watched MTV in years but from what I know, they just rerun the most popular shows as marathons.

The first couple years of MTV showed the Rolling Stones videos a lot. Fleetwood Mac's (Stevie Nicks) "Gypsy" was on constant rotation 1982. "Let's Dance" 1983 I swear was played the most that year. I love that song. I loved MTV in the beginning - it was almost 100 percent videos. Men at Work, Duran Duran and The Fixx were always on there. i loved seeing what everybody was wearing, how they set it all up. Journey was on there all the time. They always looked silly. AS did Def Leppard. Aaaaah early MTV.

I was 10 when MTV came out, & we couldn’t get cable, so it was such a treat to be able to watch it at friends’ houses or my grandma’s. I also had to make do with Friday Night Videos or California Music Channel. We finally were able to get cable when I was about 15 or 16 & I was in heaven! I got hooked on Real World in ‘93/‘94 & also The Challenge, which I still watch to this day (it’s the only show on there I watch).

Dead.

Pretty sure MTV's first original non-music programming was the game show Remote Control, in the late '80s. It seemed like a big deal at the time. Before that they showed reruns of The Monkees and The Young Ones, both of which included musical segments. My favorite night was Sundays, The Young Ones followed by 120 Minutes. Somewhere I have a box full of VHS tapes of videos taped off 120 Minutes/Night Flight/etc.

In retrospect it's amazing that the channel lasted so long playing only music videos. And we'd sit there and watch it for hours.

R26 So basically they’re just rerunning a show that’s like Americas Funniest Home Videos meets Worldstarhiphop.

Sad.

It makes sense though with Gen Z. A lot of them don’t have attention spans for TV / movies (it’s been studied) and this show works as background noise as your phone surfing.

MTV Unplugged was a good show with musicians playing their songs acoustically and talking about the music-making and songwriting process.

Popup videos were fun too, where during a video they would have an informational bubble pop up, giving fun facts about the song's topic, the making of the video, etc.

The beginning of the end.

R30 That was VH1.

As a kid I viewed VH1 and MTV for old people.

Although I will say watching “The Rose” and “Rocky Horror” on VH1 at a young age completely shaped who I am.

R33 sorry I meant to say I viewed VH1 as MTV for old people.

I only watched it in the 80s when there were no commercials.

In the 80's it was constantly on in the background when I was home alone (I was a teen living with my parents) or hanging out with friends. It really made super stars out of people like Madonna, used to love when her new videos came out. I have never been a big Michael Jackson fan but I do remember the premiere of the Thriller video and it was a big deal.

Still watched some in the 90's but by the mid 2000's when it started being all reality shows and no music videos I stopped watching.

I did watch Daria, The Osbournes, Anna Nicole, the first season of The Real World. Once in awhile I would watch My Super Sweet 16 or MTV Cribs but by the time they had on Jersey Shore I stopped watching.

^^^^ now that I think about it The Anna Nicole Show I think was on another network. Just looked and it was on E!

[quote]Pretty sure MTV's first original non-music programming was the game show Remote Control, in the late '80s. It seemed like a big deal at the time. Before that they showed reruns of The Monkees and The Young Ones, both of which included musical segments. My favorite night was Sundays, The Young Ones followed by 120 Minutes. Somewhere I have a box full of VHS tapes of videos taped off 120 Minutes/Night Flight/etc.

Remote Control jumpstarted the careers of the late Ken Ober, Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn and Denis Leary. The hostesses Kati Wuhrer and Alicia Coppola went on to acting.

R37 It was E!

MTV started going downhill with the reality shows that had nothing to do with music.

At least The Osbournes and the Jessica Simpson Show was music-related.

Why did MTV stop wall-to-wall music videos like they aired in the early years?

Did the record companies stop making the videos and therefore MTV had no new material to fill the broadcast hours?

I never heard the REASON for changing the original format.

When they fired the original slate of veejays.

I remember they used to play wall to wall videos, from a variety of genres. So if you watched, you got an exposure to different types of singers and bands.

Live Aid, in 1985 I think, was a watershed moment for the original MTV setup. I have the broadcast on DVD, all the original deejays were involved, in all their glory. Then just after that - like within months - most of them were abruptly let go. Replaced by dull nobodies, I can't even remember who. Some guy named Curry? Who was AWFUL. And the music videos changed too; suddenly a lot of heavy metal and headbanging stuff made its way into heavy rotation. The dance and pop videos seemed to take a backseat.

That was definitely the end of the initial, successful phase of MTV.

I remember when there was the big controversy that the only black artist's videos they played seemed to be Michael Jackson's. Rightly so, but once that changed and good music was still out there, why not keep part of what identified and made your channel famous, in rotation? Even at my gym they show that artists still make new music videos, and that the older classic vids are still available to show. I just have never gotten it.

I’m the Limp Bizkit boat explosion spring break concert

[quote]Live Aid, in 1985 I think, was a watershed moment for the original MTV setup. I have the broadcast on DVD, all the original deejays were involved, in all their glory. Then just after that - like within months - most of them were abruptly let go.

MTV got a lot of criticism at the time for its coverage of Live Aid, despite the fact that they covered the entire concert, and even showed the complete Oz for Africa concert the night before. That might have led to the VJ purge a few months later. Though Martha Quinn did briefly come back in the early 90's.

Funny thing of note, as much as they embraced hip hop in later years, Run DMC's performance at Live Aid wasn't even shown by the network, instead they switched over to Sting arriving at Wembley Stadium.

I was a huge fan of MTV in the mid-80's and it was glorious. Every night countdown of the top ten videos (Bon Jovi's Living On a Prayer seemed like it was number one for ages) Prime time world premieres of videos by major artists. MTV also did a lot for the new wave British music scene. Human League, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Eurythmics got their foot in the door of the US through them. VH1 wasn't bad either.

MTV went to shit with the arrival of Carson Daly and the teen pop brigade, which also killed music.

R3 With the exception of the one band member of Culture Club, that commercial looked like it was KKK Music TV. #MTVsoWhiteEarlyDays

Kurt Loder looked like he wandered in from another network and was the only adult in the room most days,

If video killed the radio star...

...I'd argue that, in a strange twist, Youtube killed the video star.

Or was it Napster and bit torrent?

The Midtown or Uptown Julie Brown! I would like to think if DL was around then we would just do the Michelle Williams thing with them.

Butt Loder

When most of the original VJs were let go, a lot of the new VJs were trying to break into acting or other fields, MTV was a way to do that.

One of the new VJs replacing the originals was actor Erik Palladino. For some reason, Eric really despised guitarist Dave Navarro, every time he introduced a video of a band Dave was in, Erik said something extremely nasty about Dave. It was hilarious. I'd love to know the backstory to Erik's comments.

Comedian/actor Bill Bellamy also started on MTV. Carson Daly hosted a MTV show.

Here’s a list of other VJs: Grace Slick and Paul Kantner's daughter China Kantner, comedian/actress Julie Brown, Idalis DeLeon who went on to act, she had a small part in Sex Feet Under, Alison Stewart and SuChin Pak, they both became TV news journalists, Steve Issacs was a singer, after leaving MTV Steve was in one of Dave Navarro’s bands, The Panic Channel, Tim Sommer who was technically a music journalist, Serena Altschul was a NY Times heiress, Reich Wing nutcase Kennedy, last I heard she was a talking head on Faux News…well, the list of VJs is very long.

Most of these VJs basically used their VJ exposure to jumpstart getting work in the fields they really wanted to work in.

R51 Don’t forget Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra. Both were doing stuff before but became really famous from being on MTV. I think they both started on the game show “Singled Out”.

And Tyrese!

He got his start as a model but working as a VJ on MTV landed him a music deal and he became an actor.

Simon Rex was a VJ too

Bowie asks why MTV isn't featuring more Black artists, particularly during prime periods.

As far as still maintaining being a VJ, Sway has been the most successful. He has his own successful radio show for Shade 45 at Sirius with Heather B (who was on the first Real World). I don’t even know if people remember that he was a VJ at MTV at this point.

That Martha VJ seemed like someone’s special needs cousin who wandered onto the set and they were too nice to say she couldn’t be on air.

Prince was great at the MTV Awards show (@ R22).

The previous year was Madonna doing Vogue.

R55 The segregation of black music has always been fascinating.

I’m 35, I remember all the way up until the 2000’s, they would cut out rap artists on Top 40 radio if they had a feature.

The last big song I remember that happening to was Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. I don’t listen to the radio anymore so I don’t know if they still do it.

I wonder what artists he was talking about back then.

Like SOS Band?

When did they play “Game Shows & Reality Shit Killed the Video Channel”?

Agree with R23 that there was a sweet spot in the mid/late 90s where they had the right balance between music and shows. People like to glamorize when it was only videos, but honestly just videos all day gets kind of boring. Around 94–98, there were plenty of videos — every teenager knew every big video of the day — but there were also ridiculous shows and surprisingly observational docuseries in prime time and weekend hours, all of which featured the music of the era. Then there were the frequent news breaks in the mix as well. It felt vibrant and interconnected, almost like all the MTV personalities lived in one house and just did this shit all day.

R61 I looked up online to try and find a programming schedule

This one is May 14, 1999

6:00AM DAWN PATROL-- videos 7:00AM MTV NEWS LINK-- news 7:30AM JAMS COUNTDOWN--videos 9:00AM MUSIC VIDEOS-- videos 11:00AM ROCKS OFF -- videos 12:00PM The Tom Green Show (comedy, no T&A) 12:30PM MUSIC VIDEOS--videos 2:00PM MTV NEWS LINK--news 2:30PM SAY WHAT?-- videos 3:00PM Fanatic---television show (fans meet celebs, no t&A) 3:30PM TOTAL REQUEST LIVE-- videos 4:30PM The Blame Game -- gameshow, some talk of sex 5:00PM JAMS COUNTDOWN-- videos 6:30PM The Cut -- musical performance competition 7:00PM MUSIC VIDEOS-- videos 7:30PM MTV NEWS 1515-- news 8:00PM SAY WHAT?-- videos 8:30PM Video Cliches -- videos 9:00PM TOTAL REQUEST LIVE-- videos 10:00PM 25 Lame-- videos 12:00AM LOVELINE -- tv show, a lot of talk of sex, shown only late night. 1:00AM YO!-- videos 2:00AM JAMS COUNTDOWN-- videos 3:30AM MTV AFTER HOURS-- videos

It perfectly revolves around the teenage life. Music videos and news in the morning, then music videos play until you get out of school and then some non-music video programs happen until dinner! You can watch videos while eating dinner, then it gets into late night TV shows before falling asleep to music videos!

Yup! I never realized until now it’s very much scheduled around the teenage schedule lol.

Oh fuck my post at R62 is a fucking mess!

Let me see if I can do it again lol

If you go here, it shows you programming schedules which is so nostalgic and where I got the list from.

My R62 is too messy so I’ll repeat my last comment

It perfectly revolves around the teenage life. Music videos and news in the morning, then music videos play until you get out of school and then some non-music video programs happen until dinner! You can watch videos while eating dinner, then it gets into late night TV shows before falling asleep to music videos!

Yup! I never realized until now it’s very much scheduled around the teenage schedule.

It went downhill when the shows came on and videos became scarcer. By the mid 90s they were playing only half a video, or defacing them with viewer's comments scrolling onscreen. For me their heyday will always be 81-83 before they succumbed to Michael Jackson, when the British pop and postpunk bands were fresh and new and the 80s hadn't yet degenerated into acid washed jeans and gigantic mall hair.

I feel like MTV went downhill pretty fast, like in the early '90s.

Let's face it, though. The early videos were not great. Low-quality. You might watch the videos again for the sake of nostalgia, but that's about all.

Rockit by Herbie Hancock was on a lot.

The NBC series "The Midnight Special" ended exactly 3 months (May 1, 1981) before MTV started - barely the blink of an eye. Yet The Midnight Special and MTV seem like 2 completely different generations of music and of musicians. That would make 1981 a year of fundamental change in how pop music is produced and presented.

To me, MTV's golden age was very brief. During the earliest years, MTV's videos were an eclectic mix. You never knew whose video they would play next. But by about 1986 or 1987, MTV was dominated by hair metal bands like Poison, Warrant, Winger, and White Lion. MTV gave those kinds of bands far more attention than they deserved. Meanwhile, British pop and new wave were becoming increasingly scarce. MTV dumbed down its programming to appeal to horny teenagers.

The thing is, there were music videos around in the 70’s, where were they seen?

For example, Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” and “Rock with You” were in 1979, before MTV. How did people see the music videos?

I assume some music videos in the 70’s were from TV shows? Like this?

If I’m not mistaken, it was the French who invented music videos and they had these things in amusement parks you could pop a coin in and play.

I think they’re the same things as in NYC where you could watch porn in.

I’ve never even seen them so I don’t know what they’re called.

But music videos had been around for a long time before MTV.

I just don’t know how people usually saw them.

I actually watch MTV Classics. It annoys me because they've changed the font for the credits on the videos. Every time I tune in to the original channel, it's only that Ridiculous nonsense. Not sure what that's about. I do think that MTV really helped define us GenXers. Iconic music videos, Spring Break Specials, The Real World/Road Rules, Rock the Vote. However, it's no longer relevant.

Death of Kurt Cobain

R55 1983 report on black artists on MTV.

R76 Watching this it makes so much sense why Madonna became so big.

R67 Yeah? I’m kind of surfing music videos they’d have played in the early 80’s smoking a joint and they’re all pretty fantastic to me.

I’ve never this song this one ever and I’m LOVING it.

Who is this! Another one I’ve never heard!

r73 it was called a Scopitone, a jukebox with a screen and a film projector connected. They were found in restaurants and bars I guess and the movies often seem little more than musical peep shows.

r72 yes the pre MTV videos are just segments taken from tv shows. In England there was Top of the Pops, in France there was Dim Dam Dom, in America Hullabaloo, Shindig etc.

I think the magic of early music videos is they had no idea what the hell they were doing. Trial and error and learning and it’s pretty experimental and fun.

R80 Very cool!!

Oh this is really cool. 43 minutes of MTV in 1982.

………..

R73 Scopitones were the video jukebox music videos of their day and have a long history.

The Scopitone that must people have seen without knowing it is These Boots Were Made for Walkin’

ABBA and Lasse Hallstrom invented the modern music video.

Real World Los Angeles was the death knell of MTV as a music-centric network. It was the reality crack that signaled the future/present MTV.

I'm glad it gave us Dave Holmes.

I will never forget MTV for making my childhood what it was. I REmember when Real World used to cast unique personalities and not just a bunch of good looking drunks. My sister and I used to sit around, binge watch, and have debates. Singled Out, mTV Jams, TRL. Thank you MTV.

Oh yeah and Daria.

Pretty much stopped after Real World Las Vegas. I was like okay we’re done here.

[quote] The early videos were not great. Low-quality. You might watch the videos again for the sake of nostalgia, but that's about all.

The early videos, with crude technology, could be inventive and compelling. I remember thinking this even at the time. The melding of punk and 18th-century proto-dandyism in a criminal plot WORKS.

If I had loads of money, I wouldn’t bother with extravagant clothes or cars, but I’d absolutely get a Scopitone machine.

I was 16 yrs old. It changed everything. It brought music to life and fashion too. At the time there was nothing like it. I quit watching so much in the mid 2000's,, maybe before that. The game shows and crap like that,started to replace the music videos and you had to wait until late at night to see non stop music videos. Bands like Bush, Nirvana, Bon Jovi, Def Leopard came to life for me. Madonna, though really was powerful as far as image. I don't think she would have been without it. MTV, was a staple for a teenager and you adult. When i saw and heard the video for Machine Head by Bush, I loved it.

R91 agreed. Which is crazy because Real World Chicago was super entertaining with good personalities. Vegas just seem like they cast a bunch of good looking people who liked to party.

[quote]ABBA and Lasse Hallstrom invented the modern music video.

Wasn't Mike Nesmith from The Monkees one of the first people to create a modern day music video? Nesmith won a Grammy award for it.

From Wiki: "During this time, Nesmith created a video clip for "Rio" (not the Duran Duran song), 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 Grammy Award given for (long-form) Music Video in 1982 for his hour-long Elephant Parts.

He also had a short-lived series (1984-5) 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, and Arsenio Hall. The concept of the show was to have comics render their stand-up routines into short comedy films much like the ones in Elephant Parts. Nesmith assembled writers Jack Handey, William Martin, John Levenstein, and Michael Kaplan, along with directors William Dear (who had directed Elephant Parts) and Alan Myerson, as well as producer Ward Sylvester to create the show. The half-hour show ran for eight episodes in the summer of 1985 on NBC Thursday nights in prime time.

Nesmith formed the Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. in 1974 to manage and develop media projects. Pacific Arts Video became a pioneer in the home video market, producing and distributing a wide variety of videotaped programs, although the company eventually ceased operations after an acrimonious contract dispute with PBS over home video licensing rights and payments for several series, including Ken Burns' The Civil War.

The dispute escalated into a lawsuit that went to jury trial in federal court in Los Angeles. On February 3, 1999, a jury awarded Nesmith and his company Pacific Arts $48.875 million in compensatory and punitive damages, prompting his widely quoted comment, "It's like finding your grandmother stealing your stereo. You're happy to get your stereo back, but it's sad to find out your grandmother is a thief." PBS appealed the ruling, but the appeal never reached court and a settlement was reached, with the amount paid to Pacific Arts and Nesmith kept confidential.

Nesmith's most recent Pacific Arts project was Videoranch 3D, a virtual environment on the internet that hosted live performances at various virtual venues inside the ranch. He performed live inside Videoranch 3D on May 25, 2009."

Pacific Arts was also involved in the Pee Wee Herman TV series.

MTV was like AM radio...they played the same crap over and over

Music videos were originally called "promotional clips" and they often aired on shows like Midnight Special, American Bandstand and other countdown type shows if the artist wasn't available to be there in person to perform. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was an early example of this. The clip was shown on many shows in the USA at the time in substitution of an actual live performance by the band.

Dick Clark used it for American Bandstand.

Jesus r96, Nesmith made bank in his lifetime. All the money from acting, touring and doing appearances with the Monkees (most of it in later years, they didn't make much in the 1960s); his revenue from his post-Monkees business ventures, including the near-$50 million settlement noted here; and his inheritance as the only child of his mother, who invented Liquid Paper in the early 60s and died worth millions.

Quite a busy, varied life.

Crazy how irrelevant MTV has become.

Last good thing from Mtv were the Unplugged, but even those went to shit.

I never liked Daria or B&B.

R27 Same! I know where my vhs recordings are though. I LOVED guest vj segments, my favorites were JT from Duran Duran & Dweezil Zappa. If I was home MTV was always on.

I still can't believe Kennedy went to the dark side at FOX News

I miss all the late night, subversive animation they showed - before Cartoon Network joined in and ruined adult animation with their shitty Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies, SeaLab, Space Ghost Coast to Coast-type shit. (Before you come to its defense - no, all that shit sucked, do NOT make a case for it, you are wrong. Lazy Flash "animation" with crappy visuals, cynical stoner humor - nothing edgy, intellectual, or artistic about it.) MTV was where it was fucking AT, yo - Beavis and Butthead (those two mocking all those crazy music vids from around the world was amazing), Liquid Television, Aeon Flux, The Maxx, The Head, MTV's Oddities, etc...hell, they even re-ran old episodes of Speed Racer at 2:00 in the morning! Fun times! Goddamnit, MTV was a fucking blast back then. Ballsy programming. RIP Everything Cool.

[quote]I still can't believe Kennedy went to the dark side at FOX News

Why not believe? Kennedy was always a ReThug asshole. She did air her views via snarky comments between introducing videos.

I just watched the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which had such great moments with MTV mainstays Duran Duran & Eurythmics. Videos were the shit in the early ‘80s!

MTV has series such as Teen Moms. What garbage.

Teen moms are not something to be celebrated. I've never watched this crap-fest, but I do constantly see commercials for this series on other channels.

Are the teen moms shown using their food stamps cards?

I gave up completely when "Daria" ended. But even a few years before that, MTV had not played my kind of music (adult contemporary VH1 type).