MTV Turns 30: Celebrating The Basic Cable Channel That Changed The World
Today, August 1st, marks the 30th Birthday of MTV: Music Television. Most of you reading this have never lived in a world without MTV. And for some of you even younger than that, you probably don’t remember a world where MTV played music videos and not horrible, vapid reality television twenty four hours a day. But there was a time when MTV was more than just a cable channel, when MTV showed us all what was cool, when one basic cable channel dictated what pop culture itself was, even beyond just a superficial level. Yes kids, believe it or not, MTV was that powerful once.
In The Beginning
MTV officially launched August 1st 1981. In their first year on the air, MTV wasn’t exactly very daring in their music video choices. But then, to be honest, there weren’t that many music videos yet to even play. With a few exceptions, like The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star“, (the first video ever shown on the network) the majority of what MTV played was a sampling of Top 40 rock music, the kind that would be sure to not offend white middle America, who was their initial target audience. In that first year or so, chances are if you turned on MTV you got a steady stream of R.E.O Speedwagon, Journey, Rush, Asia, John Mellencamp, Pat Benatar and for some reason, The J. Geils Band, a group that never broke out huge no matter how hard MTV pushed them. In that first year, MTV wasn’t dictating what Top 40 was, they were just playing it on the safe side and playing whatever was already on the majority of mainstream American radio.
Then someone at MTV management got some balls, and decided to start playing what they wanted to play instead of worrying about duplicating Top 40 Radio. A steady stream of British New Wave acts started getting played on MTV now, stuff like The Eurythmics, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, Bow Wow Wow, The Human League, Culture Club, and the list goes on and on. Older 70’s era alterna-rockers like David Bowie got a whole new lease on life with their videos playing on the channel. In a serious turn of events for the record industry, record Stores quickly began selling albums based on what MTV was playing, not what Top 40 radio was playing. It wasn’t long before the tables were turned, and the radio played whatever MTV was dictating to them. The tail was officially wagging the dog now. The new breed on MTV more or less phased out the REO Speedwagons and Journey’s of the world and replaced them with Hair Metal like Twisted Sister and Ratt and Iron Maiden. While I was never a big fan of that whole style of music, I could at least appreciate its extremeness. I’ll take Dee Sinder of Twisted Sister in ridiculous hair and make-up over the likes of bands like Boston any day. Ratings on MTV tripled in record time.
Still, MTV was still kind of a wee bit on the racist side in their first couple of years. They pretty much refused to put any videos in regular rotation from any black artists, and David Bowie even called them out on it on the air during an interview (ya know that had to be embarrassing) that changed in 1983, when MTV put Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and Prince’s Little Red Corvette into heavy rotation, soon followed by the likes of Tina Turner. With the “color barrier” now officially broken, MTV really exploded and took over America in a very big way.
By the mid 80’s, MTV’s grip on pop culture was secure. Not just on music either; all you had to do was go to a shopping mall and see girls dressed like Madonna or the Go-Go’s. NBC greenlit Miami Vice on the pitch that it would be “MTV Cops.” The quick style editing of music videos affected how films were shot and edited, not to mention commercials (this wasn’t exactly a good thing either) John Hughes littered his teen movies with music “as heard on MTV.” Swatch watches were sold to the public as the “MTV watches.” Madonna made it to the cover of Time Magazine. The network slogan “I Want My MTV” became a national catchphrase that even your mother knew. The power of this one little channel on our culture was now undeniable.
MTV & ME
On a personal level, MTV shaped my young brain just like almost everyone else my age. By 1984 I was ten years old, and just the perfect age to start becoming obsessed with pop music and all those envelope pushing icons on my television. After school, when I was done watching my afternoon cartoon block of He-Man and Voltron, I would switch the dial to MTV and just leave it there for the rest of the day. And 1984 was the Golden Age of MTV videos…in constant play were things like Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This,” Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like The Wolf,” not to mention every video off the Police’s “Synchronicity” album, Prince’s “Purple Rain” soundtrack and Madonna’s self titled debut album. And finally, there was the Pièce de résistance, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” still the greatest damn music video ever made. 1984 was MTV at its peak power, and I don’t think they’d ever be more influential or powerful (or better) than they were that year. *
Eventually, as the late 80’s came upon me and I entered high school, like any good pretentious teenager I got way “too cool for school” and mostly abandoned pop music (with the exception of a certain Material Girl and Purple Paisley Midget… I could never bring myself to abandon them) I almost exclusively started listening to “alternative” radio. And to be fair, in Southern California we had THE best alternative radio station on Earth, K.R.O.Q. 106.7 FM, back before it became the home to awful dude-bro rock that it remains to this day. I was all about the likes of Depeche Mode, The Cure, Morrissey and Jane’s Addiction. But even then, MTV had an option for me…every Sunday night I could watch their alternative music video show 120 Minutes and see videos from these artists and still retain my lame teenage faux hipness. In fact, for awhile in the early 90’s, regular MTV seemed like 120 Minutes 24 hours a day…the alternative revolution took place and suddenly I could see music videos from the likes of Bjork during daylight hours.
But by 1997, Kurt Cobain was dead and that whole alternative “revolution” thing was over, and MTV became the home for things like Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, not to mention tons of hip hop that seemed to be only about bragging about bling and calling other hip hop artists names. By the time I was only 24 years old or so, I couldn’t stomach more than five minutes of the channel I had once loved dearly and had shaped my musical and visual aesthetic so much. And this was still before MTV dropped the M in all but name and became the 24 hours of reality tv it is today.
A Tarnished Legacy
The chief difference between MTV then and MTV today was that back then, we all gathered in front of the screen in awe and admiration- we looked to the David Bowies and the Kurt Cobains and we marveled at their talent and the visual genius of the music videos. Today, people gather around their MTV to look at talentless “reality” television stars like the casts of Jersey Shore and The Hills simply to make themselves angry. Those shows are made so the masses see a bunch of nobodies picked from obscurity (usually with questionable intelligence) and see them become rich and famous and make fools of themselves as national spectacle. We can all then smugly gloat collectively as a nation at the parade of fools; “they might all be richer than me and more famous” we might say “but at least I’m not a complete moron like that The Situation guy or that Teen Mom.” MTV was so much better when it gave us stars to aspire to be, not just look down upon to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.
But, on this their thirtieth birthday, I come to praise MTV and not to bury it. Because when it was great, it was truly great, and with an influence on my generation that is almost immeasurable. On a personal level, MTV introduced me to my two lifelong pop idols, Madonna and Prince, and literally scores of others who remain on heavy rotation on my ipod shuffle today. I know when I’m in the nursing home, I’ll be doing sing-along time with the other old farts to “Don’t You Want Me” and “Karma Chameleon” instead of potentially something much worse, and that is thanks in large part to MTV. I can only hope that as MTV gets older and changes, they re-discover their roots and become a semblance of what they once were. Not for me, but for a generation of kids who deserve to have what I had, so very long ago. Because these kids today might have all kinds of cool gadgets and shit I never had, but they never had MTV in 1984 either. I think I got the better deal.
* Seriously, was there ever a cooler year in pop culture than 1984? And not just for music- in movie theaters that year we had Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Karate Kid, The Terminator, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Amadeus. In comics, we had Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. On TV, we had…umm, Who’s The Boss and Punky Brewster. Ok, so maybe not everything in the 80’s was classic.
