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August 1, 1981

🕑 Added 2021-06-05 06:38:53 +0000 UTC

Comments

Mark Goodman is on SiriusXM and he's 70 years old. Looks like he's not going away any time soon.

Jason Olshefsky

In response, I give you "MTV: Give Me Back My Life" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBW5S3-aPw0 ... a parody from the 1990s that's fairly amusing.

Gilbert Pfaff

I watched it from the first video all day that day!

I still have light blue mugs like that, bought for client use in my recording studio.

Norm Nelson

I thought that date looked familiar. I was living in a dorm in LA and didn't have cable!

Darrell Ashby

….And 40 years went by in a blink! Thank you Fran, for the memories!

Art B. Kuriosity

MTV was forced to change. A deafeningly squeaky “wheel” was “greased” and the rest (as is MTV) is .....history.

William Alsing

MTV was revolutionary great at first! Before it turned into the total garbage it is now.

Simon Deards VK3FSPD

Oh Richard Wilkins. Blah We had 3 commercial channels and 2 government ones which one was almost impossible to pickup on channel 28.

OzRetrocomp

Oh god yes... I remember that! Wasn't that how Australian TV became infected with Richard Wilkins?

Simon Deards VK3FSPD

We didn’t get it in Australia. We got a shitty Australian version on Saturday nights in the mid 80s. We didn’t get cable/sat until 94?

Dr Andy Hill

Ahh The Ramones all gone now. 😢

WOW/

Peter Knazko

Oh my -- look at the awkwardness of the v-jay! And the lack of computer effects, since it was still analog in 1981. It seems so inevitable, now, that a 24/7 music channel would have bubbled forth to hit the TV airwaves by then. Funny to hear it compared to FM; well by 1981 AM radio was becoming a non-entity as far as moving music forward as a cultural force. But FM today is as much of a dinosaur as AM was back then. But video (YouTube and all of the internet now) allows us to rock on. Well in 1981, seeing was believing and the interesting bands also looked cool, which only album covers and rare shows in your hometown could convey (and maybe Rock mags). MTV gave us the first taste of a "24/7" musical odyssey we now take for granted via the internet, our ultimate faucet of "everything, all the time", to quote the Eagles. A great snippet from the not-so-distant past, Fran.