Ok. I can still remember the first day MTV came on. It’s the 80’s… I’m working in a pizza parlor and I’m a jr. in high school. They have a huge screen TV in the corner of the restaurant and then it begins. Everyone went nuts. It was great! FINALLY music and videos for US. With our music…<now looking back it all looks quite campy… the David Lee Roths JUMPing about, the Michael Jacksons doing… well, whatever it is he did, the Duran Duran videos, Flock of Seagulls, remember their hair?!>
What the hell happend???
Now it’s crap… I mean, rap… now it’s music that you can’t understand the lyrics to… now it’s these 15 year olds dressed like 29 year olds dancing around…it’s TV shows and comedies. It’s pathetic game shows. The music, WHEN there is actual videos/music on it, is well… it’s just SAD.
NOW they have VH1… where us OLD folks…you know us… the ones NOT in our 20’s anymore…are suppose to have to go to see videos. They now call the 80’s videos… get this… CLASSICS. OLDIES.
If anyone had EVER told me that… ahem… Boy George would be considered a classic oldie one day… well… <snicker>
I was just talking about this yesterday with Dem, Not only is there VH1, but VH1 has a couple of specifically formatted channels, one is country, one is classic rock.
Madonna’s Like a Virgin was on the classic rock channel yesterday. Ugh.
Oh and MTV has the Tom Green show, so that’s one point in my book.
::::sigh:::::
I miss my MTV.
I loved the 80’s
I feel really old right now…and I’m not even 30!!!
MTV stopped making sense to me. More to the point, when I stopped identifying with it. I was talking to my bosses’ daughter(11) and a few of her friends t’other day, and MTV came up. I asked them if they knew what they showed on MTV when I was young, they said no. I replied 'music". Remember the flag on the moon? <sigh> I feel so old…
I was watching about 1 month after it first came into being. Remember when they didn’t have enough videos or something, and they would run those strange 15-minute “intermissions” composed of false-color stock footage set to strange techno music? Now that’s early MTV.
BTW, Angkins, I really like that line: “I miss my MTV”.
ahhhh, yes, good old MTV. classic you say??? of course it’s classic, to me that means good, not crap, like they play now. i remember the flag on the moon commercial, and the voltaire commercials, he’s the guy that did the commercials consisting of the claymation action around the block MTV. he used to have a web site too that had all the old commercials he did.
i fear the REAL MTV is gone. dead and buried. and rest her soul, Nena, my childhood crush, i shall never see your video again on MTV. :tears: 
I was 18 when MTV came on (dating oneself; it’s such a lonely pastime) and I loved it. Yes, the repetition was horrendous, and the first generation of VJs were dweebs.
But videos and videos for hours and hours, none of which were hip-hop! It was great.
They started with one godawful sitcom about three loser guys – can’t remember what it was called, but they’d show the episodes over and over. The beginning of the end; there was more and more of their cheap, sleazy shows. Now there are practically no videos; even their video shows mostly show only snippets, and they put crawls, bugs and logos all over them.
I turn on MTV sometimes because my job requires me to have some awareness of today’s music, and it just stinks. I miss the old days…
Catrandom
You’re all old 
Although I do wish they would play more videos… oh well. I guess the wet tshirt contest can make do 
I’ve often wondered if MTV has become genuinely shitty, or if I’ve just outgrown it. I fear a bit of both.
Dr. J
Lets not romanticize the 80’s too much. There was more than it’s fare share of crap produced in those 10 years. Yeah, Duran Duran was swell, but there was also a lot of crap bands who were nothing more than hairspray and synthesizers. Fact is, most people tend to dwell on the music of their childhood, when they really paid attention to music. Before they got busy with jobs and families. The music since tends to seem strange and without merit.
All that said, I too miss videos and I definately had the red-hots for Martha Quinn! 
I certainly hope you’re not talking about The Young Ones. Next to Fawlty Towers, it’s probably the funniest show ever made.
Look, I don’t want to be the one to tell you guys this, but…
The 80’s f***ing SUCKED!! The music was terrible, the clothes were hideous, and the videos looked like they were shot by drunk nine year olds with their My First Sony camcorders. Come on, people! Yes, we watched them all back then, but only because we didn’t know any better. Fifteen or twenty years later, there is no reason to revisit these dark and miserable times.
Having said that, the 80’s videos are still better than most current MTV programming. Except when they go to the beach house and just show lithe young things in their swimsuits shaking their hot little bodies. That is quality entertainment.
Well, compared to today’s impressionable youths, we all had an attention span worthy of the Guiness Book. Yes, I miss having the opportunity of at least making fun of videos. No more…
And we don’t get VH1 here…so I can’t even feel old in peace. The most frustrating thing about the Mtv videos of present is that the coolest part of the songs is what’s been sampled or lifted off tracks from the 70s or 80s. No, “Safety Dance” and " 99 Luft Balloons" were not the pinnacle of the musical experience, but you’ve gotta admit that there are some old vids that would be fun to see again.
Talking Heads?
The Fixx?
Debbie Gibs…oops, sorry. Okay, okay, there were some pretty bad ones, but it was nice to know you had a pretty good chance of seeing a video when you switched it on.
When I think of 80’s, Music and MTV:
The Police - “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
The Cars -“Cars” Video Cracked me up
The B-52’s - “Party Out of Bounds” was my theme song in the early 80’s.
The Talking Heads -“And the Days Go By” was my theme song for the late 80’s (“My God, What Have I Done?”)
Dire Straits - “I WANT MY MTV”
Bruce Springsteen - Was it “Dancing in the Dark” where I dreamed of being the girl he picked to dance on stage?
and when “Thriller” came out, I remember being blown away.
-Katy
“Duran Duran was swell”??? Man, I knew I should have been smoking more dope all those years.
It has been the function of youth music for about half a century (at least) to not be understood/appreciated by elders. Elders, in this case, often means anyone in their mid-twenties. There’s plenty of good music out there, even some of the music that younger people buy. But MTV long ago decided to be much less about music than Daria marathons, soft-core porn at spring break (why NOT full nudity, damnit?), rock-n-jock softball games, and the like.
Yes, all the of the wimp boy bands blow, but I thought the same of Duran Druan and all of the syntho-pop groups. The 80s had way too much Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Madonna, groups like Poison and Quiet Riot, etc. The popular music of any era is going to be mostly crap.
Now, VH1 is going the route of “no music” with all of the where are they now/before they were stars/behind the music/etc. I’ll save you some time–they’re still trying to sell music but failing, they wanted to be a star when they were kids, they had a lot of problems with drugs but they’re okay now and actually happier out of the spotlight.
Bucky
Hey, not all game shows sucked. Remember Remote Control, with Colin Quinn? That show rocked. MTv sucks now though, it really does.
When I think of the 80s I think of the hair bands… Poison, Cinderella, Ratt, Warrant, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row, etc., etc. I have about 10 videocassette tapes stored away at my parent’s house that is nothing but videos. I loved that kind of music back then… from 1987 - 1992 anyway, then Nirvana had to come out with that Smells Like Teen Spirit song and that was the beginning of the end.
And what about Headbanger’s Ball!!! I used to love watching that on the weekend. What was the guys name that hosted that show? Riki something.
I haven’t had Mtv for about 2 1/2 years now and I don’t miss it at all. I do miss some of the music from the 80s though! I’m going to a Cinderella/Poison concert next month! The tickets for that concert sure are cheap. Hmmm, I wonder why!
“…then Nirvana had to come out with that Smells Like Teen Spirit song and that was the beginning of the end.”
And a welcome end it was.
I first saw MTV in '82 when I was in the navy, living in San Diego. I had been on the boat for a couple of weeks and on my return my housemate excitedly told me we had gotten cable and I had to see this new thing he had seen before in Florida. I sat in the living room as he set the stereo to the FM simulcast (no stereo TV then) and switched to MTV. Duran Duran’s Rio came on and I thought it was the coolest ****ing thing I had ever seen.
Cinderella and Poison!? I am so there!
I still hate my parents for not getting cable. I totally missed the MTV era, and they’re to blame.
I heard MTV2 actually shows videos sometimes, and supposedly VH1 has a metal segment, but not often enough to Warrant (She’s my cherry pie…) me trying to find out when.
The Box is cool, but we don’t get it anymore. Nothing but videos and ads for itself… kinda like early MTV.
I would like to see some videos for some modern rock but since MTV can only play 3 videos a day, they never get to good stuff. Just Britney Spears (not that it isn’t acceptable TV if you mute it) and 98 Back’sync Boys.