I worked at a company that sold optical hardware for measuring the Modulation Transfer Function* of optical systems, and software for analyzing it. Modulation Transfer Function is commonly abbreviated as MTF.
The company vice president. mocked up a logo like the one used by MTV, but reading “I Want my MTF!” He actually approached MTV about getting permission to use this in our advertising.
They never responded.
*to keep to the spirit of the music industry, you can argue that the MTF of an optical system is analogous to the frequency response of an audio system. Only with the MTF, it’s the spatial frequency response, not the audio frequency.
You wouldn’t be missing anything now. MTV doesn’t show videos 24/7 now, like they did in the old days. I doubt there’s even a market for them now. I remember a recent channel called The Tube, which ran videos in heavy rotation, just like in the original days of MTV, but it went off the air before too long.
Since I was one that “just didn’t get it”, I have no way of knowing, but i suspect actual MTV wasn’t as good as I imagine it. I remember sitting through endless hours of Night Tracks hoping to see something good, and wishing I had MTV.
But was it really good? How many times can you watch Duran Duran videos before you get sick of them? You may be hoping to see Take On Me but instead you get Rock Me Tonight:eek:
MTV was terrific. Not every minute. Not every video. Doesn’t matter. The early years were fantastic, far better than any of the hour-long shows that preceded it. By the time it rolled out nationally there was far more than you could see, making you want to spend hours and hours on it.
As a Canadian teen in the 1980s I loved going to Duluth MN for the weekend and watching MTV on the motel tv. I even remember hooking up my tinny and tiny little walkman speakers to the headphone output on the motel tv in an attempt to get better sound. I am not sure that wasn’t a monooutput for a single earphone like the early transistors had. :smack: I reverted to listening via the motel tv speakers.
Comcast carries MTV Live (fka Palladia) on HD here. The 80s Rewind festivals are really good stuff but I wish they had more footage from concerts that actually took place in the Eighties. Or the concert footage that MTV used as music videos during their early days.
Not only was that campaign real, there are still similar campaigns from new channels that happen from time to time now. I can’t come up with a specific example at the moment, but I know I’ve seen a few in the last couple of years. Maybe El Rey?
I remember in the 80s when my dad bought a satellite dish, one of the big C-band things and you could pull in pretty much anything, we would also watch MuchMusic, which was Canada’s answer to MTV.
you know I remember mtv used to have infomercial like shows on the indy channels it showed videos with the VJS and showing snippets of the interviews and such imploring you to call your company and ask for mtv in the mid 80s …
I had a love hate relation with mtv … when I finally could watch it we had a mentally disturbed roommate my stepdad took care of and that’s all he watched for 18 hours a day and we didn’t get to watch anything else even when I noticed the videos repeated every 4-8 hours he still watched it because he was so high he didn’t remember anything so I didn’t like watching it until the late 80s and he was gone …
MTV was more like visual radio - you had it on but you didn’t watch it until something interesting or cool came on. That first year was spent in friends’ basements and rec rooms shooting the shit until someone noticed a particular video. But yeah, in small town KY it was hugely broadening - I bought tons of music that I’d never had heard of. I don’t think anyone at our school would have ever worn a Mohawk before MTV came to town.
Speaking of Martha Quinn, one of my favorite moments watching it is when, just before she went off the air for the day, she pulled her little brother in front of the camera to say hi, saying he’d come to give her a ride home from work. Coolest big sister ever.
In Thailand, we could watch MTV Taiwan – yes, Taiwan, not Thailand – and it still showed lots of music videos. Lots. Both Western and Taiwanese/Chinese/Hong Kong. I come back here to America and good luck finding music videos. It’s all reality shows and movies. What gives?
