It is only recently I learned that, apparently, not all cable providers carried MTV when cable was getting off the ground in the US. I wouldn’t know…we had underground wires, and we were given low priority for stringing cable. Thus, we were like the last souls to get cable many years too late. So, is it true when the Dire Straits sing “I Want My MTV”, this was actually an MTV slogan to inspire people to pressure their local cable providers to provide MTV. This is true?
Wikipedia says that the slogan was created for MTV by George Lois, who years earlier had created a cereal commercial with the tag “I want my Maypo!”
So probably not.
Yes, MTV used it in the early days.
I Want My Mtv - YouTube (actual vintage MTV ads using the phrase over and over).
Absolutely. I remember they had an ad campaign on many major channels featuring popular musicians like David Bowie (and others I forget) encouraging people to call their cable company and say “I WANT MY MTV!” By the time the Dire Straits song came out, the ad campaign was long over (but still ingrained in our memories) and MTV was pretty much on every cable provider.
ETA: Just saw Shagnasty’s link. Yeah all those 
You’re spoiled today with cable systems that offer 600+ channels. Back when MTV was first hitting the scene, the typical cable TV system only carried around 20-30 channels, so it was a real turf battle to get a network onto a local system.
If enough subscribers wanted a new channel, the local operator may have had to decide if there was a sufficiently unpopular channel that they could drop to make room.
Yep, it was. They didn’t really need to do it very long though, because they came along right when cable started to explode, so in a lot of places it was already part of the lineup when a town or city got wired.
I think I remember seeing the “I want my MTV” ads before we actually got MTV, but that was long enough ago that memories are fuzzy.
I do remember that there was at least a year or two before the local cable company started offering MTV, when I watched a lot of WTBS’s Night Tracks as my go-to source for music videos.
They couldn’t get MTV in New York City so they weren’t aware of how much of an impact it was having. Not until reports of huge record sales and concert grosses in the midlands started filtering back did everyone realize what a remarkable breakthrough they had.
MTV as we know it didn’t begin for a full year after it launched and it was really 1983 that it became gigantic nationally.
In the early 1980s record store owners wondered why all of a sudden kids were asking for records by rather obscure English bands like Madness or Adam and the Ants. Turns out they got their MTV and English groups were more into making videos at the time than American groups
“MTV: Some people just don’t get it.”
Never truer in my college town. No MTV. Just Night Tracks, and Radio 1990. Oh, and the campus TV station played what few videos they had, but boy did they have obscure stuff.
Sometimes a new channel will have conflicts with the cable provider over getting broadcast in an area. The New York Yankees channel YES has had several in its decade plus existence over what fees they get and what tier it is one. One way they combat this is to mobilize the public into taking their side. So if a cable company is getting phone calls or letters, this can be seen as “this is what the public wants…and will pay for”.
Heck, it’s even referenced in the beginning of Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing”.
Not unlike Post #1.
Er, true. 
Actually, “I want my MTV” preceded Money For Nothing. The chant by Sting was influenced by the slogan, not the other way around.
Yes in the first year I had MTV every commercial was either “I want my MTV” or suggestions to hook your Stereo to your TV because Stereo TVs were barely in existence and MTV was one of the few to broadcast in Stereo and that was the only way to take advantage of it.
As a Who fan, I remember being embarrassed seeing Pete doing that promo with his “new romantic” hairstyle.
Memorable punchline to a fictitious TV preacher’s rant, which ended in “MTV IS FILTHY ROCK AND ROLL!”
The punchline was delivered by (I think) a UK rock star (but not David Bowie, whose tagline was IIRC, “DEMAND your MTV”).
For me it was Friday Night Videos on NBC, but the same idea. If you couldn’t get MTV, but you wanted to see these new “music video” things that were getting so popular, there were these other shows that would give you a weekly fix.
My hometown cable company still doesn’t provide MTV, because several churches organized a boycott against adding it to the lineup. Never had it, probably never will.