When MTV launched, it meant it-in every sense of the word:
https://youtu.be/u1-DHI_-K1w
If you’re anything like me, you can remember getting punished and getting many-a-spankings from not enough chores and too much music television (MTV for short).
After eight long hours of work, oh the horror your parents would come home to, only to find what looked like some kind of party having gone on with MTV on full blast and there you were in full air guitar position rockin’ out to the heavy bass guitar MTV segue to that lead to commercial break.
MTV VJ Downtown Julie Brown on the set in MTV’s New York Studio in 1988. Photo by Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect.
As pop culture history sings it, indeed: VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR. And that killer was non other than MTV.
“I want my MTV!” was the popular television stations slogan that seeped right into us bratty brats back when many of us were tots and tweens hooked on MTV such that it’d commandeer our entire summers!
Starting with J.J. Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter (and Downtown Julie Brown), MTV had VJ’s that seemed like they were the big sisters and brothers we never had. They played the music and videos that we couldn’t wait to talk about in school the next day.