We want our MTV!

If you've ever wanted to hear a couple of Gen X'ers wax nostalgic about MTV, then you're in luck. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just a few
MTV generation babies hanging out talking about MTV on this
MTV episode of Stuff You Should Know About MTV.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
D Dan Dan, Dan Dent, dan At, dann Nnett, dann Nnett.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
That's I'll be able to do that with my dying breath.
It's so ingrained in my head.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, I mean, how can you not picture Neil Armstrong
jumping off onto that moon yep with an MTV flag.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
For sure, and like a multi changing MTV flag that's
just drawing over the American flag. It's just iconic.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah. But hey, people, uh, the answers to who wrote
that song and who came up with that idea, they're
all in this jam packed episode about MTV where we
are surely going to wax nostalgic.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
I think it would be impossible not to. As a
matter of fact, I challenge us to try not to
be nostalgic in this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I've already ruined it. I just air guitar the MTV theme.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
We'll exclude that Okay, so we're talking about MTV. I
don't think there's many people out there who don't know
what MTV is. It's a global juggernaut, or it certainly
was at one point in time. But for those who
may not be familiar, MTV stood for Music Television, and
it was what most people consider the first network dedicated

(01:40):
to playing music videos. It's not true, but it's close
enough that you might as well just say, fine, we'll
go with that as the definition.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, for sure. And this was not the beginning of
music videos music videos where MTV did not create the
music videos. They just were the first channel. Well that's
not even true either, so I'm just gonna shut up now.
Some people point to the song Chantilly Lace from nineteen
fifty eight from The Big Bopper as maybe the first
music video because it was not just a film of

(02:11):
a band playing their song, but there was some performative
theatrics to it.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I saw one earlier by sixteen years with Cab calloway
doing Mini the Moocher.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah. Well, the Beatles are who people usually point to.
It's kind of starting out the music video thing where
they showed the band doing other things and they were
a little more elaborate and had different scenes and you
could see those on Top of the Pops on BBC
or the Ed Sullivan Show. And then that Bohemian Rhapsody
video from Queen from nineteen seventy five was one of

(02:42):
the big ones, and they expressly did that so they
didn't have to lip sync a performance on Top of
the Pops.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And that's a full eight years before MTV came out,
so that was like a definitive music video that they
played on MTV for like decades to come. It was
just a great video, but it also kicked off something
really important that led to MTV, which was it became
kind of standard in the recording industry to create a

(03:09):
music video for maybe the top single or something of
a big album that a big act was coming out
with to use as a marketing or promotional tool. So
apparently Queen kicked that off with the Bohemian Rhapsody video.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, for sure, there were some countries had like, you know,
music video shows. It would be on maybe late night
or something on a weird station. New Zealand had a
radio with pictures in nineteen seventy six on the nose
the USA Network, And I do remember this. In nineteen
seventy eight, they had a show called Video Concert Hall.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I remember. I didn't like sit there glued to it
like I did MTV because I was still just seven
years old, and I think it was a late night thing.
But it was really you know, the MTV story goes
and locks up with the story of cable television. By
the way, big thanks to Olivia for this and little hint
up coming on Thursday, we're gonna round it out with
an episode on VH one. What Yes, you knew that?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Real?

Speaker 1 (04:08):
You didn't know that? No? Yeah, I told you in
an email, let's do MTVMBH one this week.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
I must have missed that.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
All right, Well, I'm glad we you're talking about MTV.
We'd be in bad shape for real. But the rise
of cable as like ten million subscribers in nineteen seventy
five to forty million in nineteen eighty five. That was
really what grew MTV was cable being a thing and

(04:36):
the US government saying, hey, cable, it's a little looser,
you can kind of do a little more, and then
cable company saying, hey, maybe we should start thinking about
kind of different kinds of channels we've never had before.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, because there were a lot more channels that the
FCC opened up on the bandwidth, where before it was
just over the air channels, and those were full, so
don't even ask shut up, the networks have those lockdown.
When cable opened, it was like, what do you want
to do. You want to make a channel off for kids, Great,
let's found Pinwheel and then eventually call it Nickelodeon. You

(05:09):
want to show reruns, We'll call it Nick ad Knight.
You want to show little kids, even smaller kids programs, Great,
we'll make a channel called Nick Junior. What else do
you want? And people said, we got enough Nickelodeon, Let's
think of something else. And one of the other things
that was thought of was something called the Movie Channel.

(05:30):
And there's a guy named Bob Pittman who was working
on it, and he happens to be the CEO of
iHeart Media, who we work for, and he's one of
the big players with the founding of MTV. And it
is usually the person that people will tell you who
know about this kind of thing, who if you ask
him who founded MTV, the answer will usually be Bob Pittman.

(05:53):
And that is true to an extent, but he wasn't alone.
One of the other founders, who is sometimes called the
architect of MTV, was already a very famous person by
the time MTV came out.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Are you talking about Mike Nesmith?

Speaker 4 (06:07):
I am okay.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
This was in nineteen seventy five. Mike Nesmuth of the
TV Show and the musical group The Monkeys. He made
a pilot called pop Clips, which was backed by TV production,
Legend and Juggernaut Norman Lear and it was, you know,
it was basically prot MTV. They had comedians introducing music

(06:31):
videos like promotional videos that these record companies were making, right,
And there was a guy named John Lack. I don't
think we mentioned that time. Warner Cable Corporation was one
of the early cable companies that they launched Nickelodeon. They
were kind of experimenting around, and in nineteen seventy nine
American Express bought half of that and that new company
John Lack worked for. He was the COO and he

(06:55):
ran Nickelodeon, and Nickelodeon did very well, and he eventually
hooked up with Bob Pittman, who, like you said, was
developing the Movie Channel, which I sorely missed. The Movie
Channel was great.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
That was my favorite one too. I don't know why,
but it was my favorite.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Because it was only movies. Yeah, I guess that's actually
that was it because for a kid, even though HBO
was great, they had other stuff, and as a kid,
you were like, I just want movies, and that's what
the Movie channel was.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
So Bob want to see Outland? What's the problem?

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Oh man, you know you kidding. So Bob was running
that lack John Lack came to Bob and said, hey,
what do you think about doing something? If you're doing
this movie only channel, what about a music only thing?
And so Bob Pittman said, great, let's call it TV
one and they went, oh, no, that's already a thing.

(07:45):
And he went, all right, how about TVM like TV music?
And everyone went, well, what about MTV. We think that
sounds a little better, and he said all.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Right, yeah, And don't feel bad for Mike Nesmith. He
wasn't like squeezed out or they didn't steal his idea.
He was invited to be a part of the whole thing,
and he was not interested. He has always considered himself
an artiste and didn't run and get into the corporate
nitty gritty of it. So he said, just buy me
out and I'll go along my way. But he did

(08:16):
essentially kind of come up with the concept in the format,
and then Pittman and Lack took it over with a
couple of other guys, Fred Siebert and Allen Goodman, whose
experience I think up to that point had been working
together at a Columbia University student radio station. So these
people were all young, pretty hip. It's the early eighties.

(08:37):
And again the idea that there are promotional music videos
already in existence out there and that the record companies
give them away for free was the basis of where
MTV and all of the other like music video programs
came from, because you could make this thing on the cheap,

(08:57):
because again, record companies were giving these things away for
free and saying, yes, play them via condios. It will
only help us if you play these things on TV.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah. I remember when I met Bob for the first
time in New York at the iHeart offices. Our boss
Connell took me by. I think we had an official
meeting with him, but I was like, oh, like, I
gotta say something about MTB I said, is that for boten?
Is that not the kind of thing. He's like, oh no, man,
He's like, you should definitely say something. And I met

(09:28):
Bob and I was like, mister Pittman, I said, I
just want to let you know. I was like, I
was the guy. I was that kid who sat there
at ten years old, gulued to my television watching MTV
as many hours as I was allowed to consume it.
I was like, I was that kid. And he was like,
you know, he said, we counted on you and everyone

(09:49):
like you doing that same thing, otherwise it would not
have been a success. So he thanked me, which I
thought was very cool. Well, you have to finish the
story all the way at at well what was the end?
Around his desk with tears in his eyes and embraced
you for a good minute.

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Connell said, no, no, no, no, he did not.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
But I think I touched him maybe a bit. I
don't know. Who can tell. He sent me a ball
of tequila one Christmas.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
No, I like that one of those two. Oh we'll see.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I guess you didn't make him cry though.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
Did you?

Speaker 2 (10:20):
No? But I touched him.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (10:24):
So he hires these kids from the radio station. Like
you mentioned, they've got these videos, they need the other stuff.
They need the logo, they need the theme song, they
need the stuff in between the music videos, not only
just a cast, which we're going to talk about, but
you know, the like the bumper the video bumpers and
stuff like that. So they brought in again teams of

(10:45):
friends to do this stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, there was a I guess a guy named Frank
Olinsky who was a friend of Fred Sebert, remember, one
of the Columbia radio station guys, and he was creating
a design studio and he created the logo and apparently
just got it right out of the gate like it was.
There were not many iterations of it, like he just
nailed it. And there are very few logos that are

(11:10):
more recognizable than MTV. Yeah, in part because it spells
out the name in the logo, so you kind of
know exactly what the logo's for, but it's still pretty recognizable.
It's a logo, it really is. And then the musical riffs,
including the one that you did at the top of
the podcast, those were created by a couple of guys
named Scott Elliots and Jonathan Peterson, and they based it

(11:33):
on the Kinks. You really got me.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, it's you know, similar, I guess.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, yeah it is. I mean, you can definitely tell
when you hear that. But I never thought like.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Yeah, yeahs rip off, you know yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
And then that moon Man, the moon landing became as
as sort of tied to MTV as anything else. And
is it because they thought, hey, where also embarking on
a journey not yet known? Sure? Is it because it
was one small step for television and a giant leap

(12:08):
for the music industry? Of course? Was it also because
that stuff was public domain and rights free. Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah. If the US government, which NASA is an agency
of the US government, the US government owns something, you
all own it too, as an American. It's in the
public domain, buddy. One of the other reasons, though, that
I saw, was that they were trying to basically say, like,
this is as monumental a cultural event as landing on
the Moon was.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, for sure. They initially had a version with Neil Armstrong,
and I could swear I remember hearing, you know, one
small step for me, one giant leap for mankind, And
I guess I watched the first few days. I mean,
I know I did, so that must have leaked in there,
because I definitely remember hearing that version. But Neil Armstrong

(13:00):
came forward and he was like, no, no, no, no, no,
like that may be in the public domain, but that's
my voice. You can't use my voice. So John Lack
said he replaced that by saying a recording of himself
Ladies and Gentlemen rock and roll, and that was it.
Apparently after the Challenge Disaster, that branding ended in nineteen

(13:20):
eighty six. But yeah, I didn't know that. I know
the moon Man is still the VMA Trophy, so maybe
just parts of it continued on. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
I could see them taking it off the air temporarily
because I deftinitely remember seeing it too, I would guess
after nineteen eighty six, but I thought so, yes, I
could see the Challenge of Disaster happening, being like, yeah,
let's just not do anything space related right now.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah? What about the taglines? He had a couple of
those early on too, right.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
The idents you mean, oh the tagline sorry, yeah, apparently
it was you'll never look at music the same way again?
Pretty fun on cable in stereo. Yeah, yeah, they're okay.
That and ladies and gentlemen rock and roll. They just
sound like they're delivered by somebody wearing rainbow suspenders, just

(14:08):
real like late seventies, early eighties kind of branding stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, yeah, I could see that, But what about.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
The idents, the identifying I guess snippets. I'm not sure
what the actual TV trade name is for them.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
I think I call them bumpers earlier. I'm not sure
what the trade name is either, But I don't know
what we're headed here, so take it away.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Oh well, it's like station branding, showing you what network
you're watching. And MTV became really famous for all sorts
of weird and bizarre ways of showing like are you're
watching MTV? Like one of the really famous ones that
I remember was it was a guillotine suddenly coming down
and you had no idea what was going on. It

(14:48):
was just the whole thing started on shot of a
guillotine blade falling and then all of a sudden, in
the basket or on the floor of the gallows or wherever,
a head fall down, and the head is in the
shape of the M and there's two eyes and like
a tongue sticking out and it's this really weird, unsettling
claymation head. But it's the MTV logo.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, you know we did. If anyone saw our short
run of the Stuff You Should Know TV show, we
had some very I think it was almost like an
homage some very similar bumpers that came in and out
of commercial break for our TV show that were animations
done by our friend Russ Yeah, who did a phenomenal job.
They're just like, it's one of the coolest things about

(15:30):
that show still, I think.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah. And also, if you want to see some MTV idents,
there's something on YouTube titled Creepy MTV Ident and Logos
Collection nineteen nineties and it's I think like twenty five
minutes of these ten second clips.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Amazing. I'll have to check that out.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yeah, you definitely should. Sorry, didn't send it to you.
That's okay, No, it's not Chuck, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
On August first, just after midnight nineteen eighty one, is
when MTV formerly for Mulli premiered sort of. I mean,
I guess it did formally appear, but unless you lived
in just parts of New Jersey then you wouldn't see
it because that was there was only one cable operator
who even carried it at the time, and the cast
even had to like pile in a rented school bus

(16:19):
to drive to Fort Lee, New Jersey at a bar
called the Loft because they knew that they would have
it there. But the very first images that came on
screen were the was the Columbia Space Shuttle launching, that
moon landing that we spoke of, the MTV logo, and
of course that musical riff all put together and what
is now the most tired and obvious trivia question of

(16:41):
all time, probably the very first video to play. And
I'm not making fun of if you didn't know this,
but it just feels like one of those It's like,
oh my god, everybody knows that the Buggles video Killed
the Radio Star was the first MTV video.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, which is appropriate video Kill the Radio Star, although
it did it quite the opposite though. It actually made
the Radio Star into even bigger stars, as we'll.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
See, unless you weren't good at videos.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
No, or you didn't want to make a video, yeah,
you're basically making a massive career choice right then, in
the eighties and nineties to just basically be like, no,
I don't want to be that huge, So I'm not
going to play MTV's game.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, I think the question now at Bart Truvia should
be everybody knows that video Killed the Radio Star was
the first music video played on MTV. What was the second?

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Oh do you know, because I don't, I don't have
that list.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
It is it was Pat Benattar You Better Run. In
that first twenty four hours, there were one hundred and
sixteen unique videos for two hundred and nine total plays.
So yes, there were plenty of repeats. The Pretender's Brass
and Pocket the who You Better You Bet was the
first one to be repeated. Rod Stewart had this is shocking.

(18:00):
On the very first day of MTV. Rod Stewart had
eleven not just videos playing, he had eleven different videos
playing for sixteen total plays.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
And your boys Iron Maiden were in that first they
were in the top twenty. Buddy number sixteen was the
song Iron Maiden.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, and then later on they played Rathchild too, so
they had two videos in the first twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah. So I mean if you kind of put all
those together, what you're seeing is a very very varied lineup.
Even though they were replaying stuff like Phil Collins in
the Air Tonight and Just Between You and Me by
April Wine. Those were each played five times on the
first day. But you know they had a to call

(18:46):
when you don't have a lot of stuff in stock problem.

Speaker 4 (18:52):
I don't know, a supply problem.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Oh okay, yeah, so yeah, it was so varied. I
saw that they played the video for Andrew gold thank
You for Being a Friend, which went on to become
the Golden Girls theme. That was the fifty fourth video
played on MTV ever, and they only played it once.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
But who was playing this vjays? They had to start
out with an initial lineup of vjys. Bob Pittman very
much had I think it was kind of Breakfast clubby.
He wanted very specific archetypes of youngish people. He said,
we need a black person, which was JJ Jackson forty
one years old by the way, so he was sort

(19:30):
of the the old guy for the ten year old
that was watching.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
We need a girl next door, which was Martha Quinn
twenty two years old. I think she was the youngest.
We need a sexy little siren, clearly Nina Blackwood. We
need a boy next door that would have been Alan Hunter.
And then we need some hunky Italian looking guy with
curly hair, and that was, of course Mark Goodman.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I think Mark Goodman was the first VJ on.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Oh, I thought it was Alan Hunter.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman. I watched, like,
there are also videos of you know, the first hour,
the first two hours, the first whatever hours of MTV,
and I watched the first a little bit of it,
and I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman who was first. Oh, okay,
we'll we'll find out eventually. One day I did see that.

(20:17):
I think VH one rebroadcast the first twenty four hours
of MTV once not too many years ago.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Oh well, that's fun.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, just as like a hey guys, we like you
over here.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And also I'm a semi recent subscriber to Serious xm H.
I don't know why I resisted for so many years.
Maybe I just didn't know as much about it, but
I love it. It's great. It's fun to have somebody
curating music and not constantly for me at least be
sitting around going like, oh god, I don't want to
listen to I can't think of anything. What can I play?

(20:51):
And it's great and they got great channels. This is
not an ad for them, but I really really am
enjoying it. And there are a few shows on a
few stations from those VJs. I think Martha Quinn has
a show.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, Alan.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Hunter has one. Mark Goodman, I think Nina Blackwood used to.
I'm not sure if Martha good Quinn still does, but yeah,
it's cool to and I didn't even know, Like, I'll
just be listening to a cool station and it's like
Mark Goodman pops up. It's nice.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
I feel like they owe you at least a free
month for a hat, a baseball cap.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
At least it happened a free year.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Okay, yeah, so did you finally cave when the offer
for how much it would cost you a month kept
going down and it got into like the dollar fifty area.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, I mean that's the sort of the ticket. You
just wait for a good deal first twelve months or
like five bucks or something.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
And they said, well, there it goes, your free year, chuck.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
A couple of comedians early on that went on to
be noteworthy were rejected. Richard Belzer, which is hysterical to
think of him as an EMPTVVJ.

Speaker 4 (21:52):
He's so cool though, oh of bells.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
And then Carol Leifer was a comedian who later went
on to write for Seinfeld.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yes, she did pretty well for herself. Yeah, the thing
is in retrospect today you're like, yeah, MTV is huge,
not at first, like you said, basically, Fort Lee, New
Jersey was the first and only place to have access
to MTV, and like you said, New Jersey was the
only place, just a few small parts of New Jersey
was the only place where you could see MTV. So

(22:18):
it wasn't out of the gate like a sure bet
that MTV was going to become a huge cable juggernaut.
And to kind of help spread the word that there
was such a thing as MTV, an ad agency called
the LPG Pond Agency very wisely came up with the
I Want my MTV campaign, and I remember seeing those

(22:39):
on MTV, but they were originally designed to play on
other networks, to get people watching at home to call
their cable operator and say, hey, man, I want my MTV.
And it worked.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
I mean basically, any musician that came through the MTV
office and studio, I think they just had like a
standing set where they could say just go in there
and however you want to do it, say I want
my MTV. And that's why they were also kind of
fun and varied and clearly off the cuff, but it
became part of their branding such that the one of

(23:15):
my favorite groups, Dire Straits in nineteen eighty five immortalized
it via Sting as a guest singer singing I want
my MTV at the beginning of the song money for Nothing,
which would also become a huge, huge music video.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Uncredited guests I think.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Even meaning that they didn't pay him, no, that.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
They didn't say and Sting ladies and gentlemen, well like
in the song, Yeah, that's what I would have expected.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Who does that? Like before Dolly Parton's verse in Islands
in the Stream, Kenny Rogers just goes and now Dolly.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Parton, I could totally see that he would pull it
off too.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
He totally could have.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
So.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
One of the things that also helped the channel spread,
especially by word of mouth among their target market, which
was teens, especially teens who got fat allowances from their parents,
is that some conservative places were like, we're not carrying
this MTV, and they made the terrible mistake of actually
publicizing that they weren't going to carry MTV, and they

(24:13):
were like Christian organizations, the Parents Music Resource Center would
kind of get in the craw of MTV but simultaneously
give it really good press, because if your parents didn't
want you watching it, you definitely wanted to watch MTV.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know I mentioned that supply problem.
I do have a number here thanks to Olivia. There
were only two hundred and fifty videos at first, so
if you look at the math, they played two hundred
and nine videos on the first day, so they sort
of spent their allowance almost fully on that first day.

(24:49):
So for a long time you were seeing videos and
repeated heavily and heavy rotation, and even once they had
you know, it was sort of like the radio, like
the ones that were hit got played more, even when
they did have the supply.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
My friend did a little bit of math.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Ooh how God is always my favorite part.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
At an average of three minutes per video I think
is a good average, they would have to start over
every twelve hours.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh if they just didn't repeat ones and they just
played their whole supply.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Yeah, the whole wid Yeah. One thing though, there was this,
there's a documentary out on Divo that's really good on Netflix.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
Oh I saw, haven't seen it.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
It's really good, I think, And they really kind of
talk a lot about how Divo so Divo in the
early days, they were an art collective as much as
a band. Yeah, and so they made quirky, weird films
for their songs. So they were making music videos before
MTV and they didn't have anywhere to show them. And
then MTV came along, and Divo helped make MTV. They

(25:52):
gave them more really good like videos that people wanted
to see. Yeah, and then as MTV got bigger and
bigger and more and more commercial, Divo got left to
the wayside, forgotten. You could say, it's actually kind of
sad as things just kind of started to go downhill
for the band. But that that was a big point
that they made, and I think something overlooked that there

(26:13):
were a lot of interesting pioneering groups oh yeah, that
were making videos even before MTV came along. The MTV
digested and fed itself on and grew big on and
then they just got left because all of a sudden,
Kip Winger was like, oh, if I took my shirt
off and tease my hair out with it. Put a
little aquinet in there. I can make a video too,

(26:35):
and they're like, no, no, no, it's not quite that easy.
We need to film it in black and white video
and then you'll have a video. He's like, oh, okay,
let's do it, and.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Kip Winger's like yeah, but like, don't you understand my
song's about seventeen year old girls.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, it really is, there's no getting around it. The
only one that's worse, they're more blatant than that, is
Benny Madrones.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
No.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
His is Into the Night where he's like trying to
spring like a middle schooler or something like that from
her parents' house.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Oh, I don't remember that.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
If I could fly, I pick you up, into you, into.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
The Oh I know that song?

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, show you.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
It's a good song, super creepy.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
You just can't stop and think about what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah. Or watch the Linel Ritchie video for hello is
it me You're looking for? Oh, he's kind of a
sweet song, but in the video he's like a He's
like a teacher that seemed seemingly stalking a blind student.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Right and a sculpture sculptor, right, an art teacher.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, I think so it was. It's one of those
at the time you're like, oh that's sweet. Now you're like,
oh my god, like fire fire that teacher.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Right. There's a lot of eighties and nineties media that's
like that.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah. One thing I did want to say when you
were talking about Devo, like I can say for sure
that ten year old Chuck would not have known about
Devo or the Talking Head, right, or like do you
remember the Art of Noise video?

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Oh, like the super cool like animation.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Is like herky jerky stop motion. Yeah, like chit chainsawing mannequins.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
And what was the name of the song.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
I don't remember the name of the song, but the band.
But like, there's no way I would have known, Like
I was listening to the top forty radio and then
in a couple of years my brother in law would
start feeding me Southern rock and Leonard skinnerd and Almond
Brothers and stuff like that, and like, there's no way
I would have been listening to any artsy stuff like

(28:33):
that because that didn't come along for me until I
started listening to alternative music in like the ninth and
tenth grade.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
You know, And I think a lot of people out
there would be like, well, no, Chuck, you would have
heard Divo on the radio, or you would.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Have heard I doubt it, are maybe talking to the.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Radio, maybe talking heads. Right. The point is is the
reason you heard those on the radio is because of MTV.
Because when it became clear that if you gave MTV
promotional videos for free and played them, yeah, you were
going to start selling records in that cable operators region.
That's just what happened. It became very clear, very quantifiable,

(29:10):
early on that where MTV played a song and it
didn't matter if it was a well known band or
someone you'd never heard of. Those records we're going to
sell in local record stores. And from that point on,
MTV is basically it had its its path set out
for him.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, man, Devo is so good. If your only experience
with Devo is the satisfaction the Rolling Stones cover or
the whip It, both of which are great songs. Yeah,
like do yourself a favor and just dive in. It's
amazing music. I love Devot and shout out of course
to Akron Akron Akron in Forrestone High School.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Chuck We're thirty minutes in and we haven't taken an
ad break yet.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
I thought we took one.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
No, I don't think so, did we. Let's ask Jerry
to rule on this. Jerry, you have not okay?

Speaker 1 (29:58):
All right, Jerry verified, and hopefully we can leave that
in there Jerry's voice. I don't know if she's going
to be okay with it or not, but this one's
clearly going to be super size. So maybe thirty minutes
is about right.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Okay, So we're going to cut to commercial break right now?
Will you play us out with the music stinger? No?

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Oh oh me, I thought you met Jerry.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
You Dan Danna, Danna, Danna Dan Dan It bannan Internet
bannet very nice.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Okay. Check. So. One of the things I definitely associate
with MTV is Michael Jackson's Thriller. I was into Thriller.
I had the red Thriller jacket. My mom made me
a white sequin glove for my first communion as a gift.
I was super into Michael Jackson and I love Thriller
so much that my family bought the making of the

(31:23):
Thriller video on VHS and my sister watched it essentially
until it broke. So I always associate MTV with Thriller.
Anytime I knew it was coming on, I would go
watch it. It was awesome. But it turns out like
Michael Jackson and his record label had to basically fight
to get on to MTV, which is mind boggling to

(31:43):
me these days.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah, for sure. This was nineteen eighty two when the
Landmark album came out. There's a very funny Vincent Price
story because Vincent Price, obviously the legendary spooky actor, was
in the thirteen minute mini movie that accompanied as the video,
and Vincent Price had an option apparently to either take

(32:06):
a flat fee of like I don't even know how
much it was, twenty grand or something. That's all I
was gonna say, or get yeah, that sounds about right,
or get points on the Thriller album. And he clearly
opted for the flat fee oh wow, and would go
on to regret that for many years, and apparently over

(32:26):
the years called Michael Jackson a lot trying to sort
of get back that deal, which his calls were never returned.
And I will just let the listener look up the
quote apparently that came out about Vincent Price when Michael
Jackson settled with his alleged victims many years later. I'm
not going to say it here, but you can go

(32:47):
look it up if you want.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Okay. One other thing about that album too, that was interesting.
Billy Jean was on there. I know Beat It was
on there. They both were, but Eddie van Halen played
guitar and Beat It very famous like solo. Oh yeah,
And apparently at the time van Halen had like no
outside work deal with one another. All they could do

(33:09):
is focus on van Halen, and so Eddie van Halen
had the opportunity. He's like, yeah, I don't think anybody'll
hear this record. I'm just going to play on this
dude's record and no one will know about it because
it will be uncredited. And sure enough, it turns out
that Beat It and Thriller became one of the biggest
selling albums of all time.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, I mean well, people sort of like, how could
Vincent Price have done that? But Michael Jackson wasn't that
level until after Thriller, So, I mean, Off the Wall
was out of course, and he was with the Jackson five,
but no one knew it was going to be you know,
one of the best selling, if not the best selling
albums of all time.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Man, poor Vincent Price. I didn't know that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
And also in regards to Thriller, it was a nine
hundred thousand dollars budget for that video, directed by John Landis,
and part of the funding came from Josh's parents because
they ended up selling, you know, the making of on
vhs like you mentioned, one hundred thousand copies of that
in advance for twenty nine to ninety five. Showtime paid

(34:09):
three hundred thousand dollars to see the documentary or I'm sorry,
just to air the documentary, and MTV paid another quarter
of a million dollars for the ultimate right, So.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
That's just the documentary.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, because the videos were free, yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
For the making of Thriller the documentary, and it was good.
It was like an hour and ten minutes long. I
looked it up.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Oh yeah, I watched it.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
So one of the reasons why Thriller was a big
deal is because there weren't a lot of black performers
or artists on MTV at the time, so much so
that David Bowie very famously called MTV out.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
In an interview on MTV with Mark Goodman, and he
basically just said, like, what's what's the deal here? I
think his actually quote is what the holy heck is
going on with use guys? And it was it was true.
I mean like you just couldn't put it any other away.
And MTV basically said, well, we play rock, and it's
actually rock's fault because they're the ones who exclude black

(35:07):
acts by calling them R and B and not rock.
So blame blame the music industry, not us. And that
didn't fly. That wasn't good enough. And there's a guy
who's there's a hero in this story. It's him. His
name is Walter Yetnikoff. I think he was the head
of CBS Records at the time, and he said, if
you don't start playing these singles, these videos off of

(35:27):
Michael Jackson's Thriller album, we're pulling all of CBS Records artists.
You're not going to get a single video form many
of them. And that was significant because they made up
about a quarter of the videos that were playing on
MTV at the time.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, and part two of that and this is for real,
he said, we will publicly accuse you of racism if
you don't start playing these yeah, so I think that
really hit home. Obviously, they got Billy Jean and beat
it in the rotation fairly heavily at first, but Libya
said she on that didn't last too long. I feel

(36:01):
like I remember seeing those ad nauseum forever.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Oh really, I remember not seeing them as often as
I wanted.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Oh well, you also had a Sequin White love on,
so you might have wanted to hear more than me.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
I love those songs though. And I remember working a
commercial job one time with my longtime production manager Andrea,
and she it was very casually dropped that she was
a production coordinator on the beat at video one time,
and I was like, excuse me. One of the fun
things about doing that stuff in LA is you would

(36:35):
always meet people that like just worked on these legendary jobs.
Every now and then it's like, yeah, yeah, I was
the lighting guy for whatever for thriller.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
That's cool.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
So by this time, we're talking mid eighties and MTV
is now the place that is making the names of
the artists who are making videos for their music, right, Yeah,
And the more daring you were, the more Kip Winger
ask you were you could make a really big name
for yourself. It didn't matter all that much whether your

(37:07):
music was particularly good. Sometimes it didn't matter whether your
video was even particularly good. If you could get onto
MTV and nail it in just the right way, they
would play it a lot, and you would sell a
lot of records and your your career would be made.
And it's no overstatement to say that Madonna's career was made.

(37:29):
Who else, Chuck.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Well, I mean people that already had good careers were
launched into the stratosphere, like people like Billy Joel who
was already a prominent artist. All of a sudden, he's
putting out some like some of the buzz band, like
groundbreaking videos like Pressure and then when he married or
was dating at least Christy Brinkley, oh M video and

(37:51):
like the video for Uptown Girl, and all of a
sudden that the biggest supermodel on planet Earth was on MTV.
That was a big deal. They started the Top twenty
video countdown in nineteen eighty four, So all of a sudden,
that is rivaling America in Top forty on radio. As
far as like where the kids are going to see
the top content, the VMA's a video. Music words started

(38:14):
also in nineteen eighty four and had plenty of iconic moments,
and very quickly. Like music video directors, it became sort
of a farm league for people that would go on
to be huge. Huge movie directors started out in music videos.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Or it went the other way too. I saw that
William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist in nineteen eighty three,
also directed Laura brand Again's video for self Control in
nineteen eighty three. Yeah, you know, the one where she
lives among the creatures of the night. Uh huh, she
doesn't have the will to try and fight.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
I remember that. I love Laura brand Again.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
That's a great song. It beats the heck out of Gloria.
If you ask me, I like Lauria. I mean, I
guess you don't have to choose. But I still like
self control more. But yeah, William Friedkin of The Exorcist
directed that video.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
That's true. But far more often, to be fair, it
went the other way and people started out music videos
and went on to be very popular film directors. David
Fincher directed Vogue from Madonna, The End of Anocence from
Don Henley Janey's Got a gun from Aerosmith, not the
Aerosmith videos that featured Lib Tyler and Alicia Silverstone that

(39:27):
were also iconic. He also directed the George Michael Freedom
ninety video, which talk about supermodels, like every supermodel under
the sun was in that one.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
I was reading about George Michaels I Want Your Sex
video and I was like, I guarantee that was as
controversial as anything was when it came out, And so
I went on to our beloved newspapers dot com and
looked for some contemporaraneous articles on that, and dude, the
stuff that they were saying, like like should videos should

(39:58):
sexy videos be? Yeah, there are limits to artists' rights
and all this just junk censorship, junk that today is like,
this is what like you guys were amusing yourselves with
in the mid to late eighties, and it absolutely was,
and if you go back and look at the video,
it is objectively sexy. But to ban anything because of

(40:22):
this video, it's just mind bogglingly stupid. Today. In twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, for sure, another group of directors, Michel Gondry and
Spike Jones, got their starts. If you want to talk
about just sort of groundbreaking videos. Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer in
nineteen eighty six. Yes, it was directed by Steven R. Johnson.
That the amazing stop motion animation with the help of
the Brothers Quay and Ardman Animations. That was a big one.

(40:49):
And then of course the Aha Take on Me video
was a huge, huge breakthrough video.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Man.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Such a great song still, yeah, like the kind of
song you can listen to on repeat. Still. I mean,
think about how many times you've heard take on Me.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I love the song.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
It's a really great song. Still. But yes, that video
is amazing and plus, I mean it didn't hurt that
the lead singer was about as dreamy as a person
on MTV.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
D Yeah, they're all they're all hot, dude.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Yeah, I remember my sister with her hands clasped under
her chin, just like staring at the TV whenever that
guy came on.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
We should mention just for Lyvia too, because Liba wrote
this and she clearly has a soft spot in her
heart for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, she pointed out that there is a literal version
that they sing like. They changed the lyrics based on
what's going on in the video. It's pretty hilarious. There's
some other ones too that definitely made MTV because, as
we talked about in Saturday Morning Cartoons, MTV provided a
bardic function for American teenagers and eventually teenagers around the world.

(41:53):
Like when you went and watched The Top twenty Countdown,
you were seeing as all of your friends were seeing
at the same time. What was cool that week? Right,
or you talked about like have you seen the zz
top video? Like zz Top had a trio of videos
called the Eliminator Series for legs, sharp Dressed Man and
give Me all Your Loving and it featured like that

(42:14):
super cool like nineteen thirties car or whatever with the
zz top keychain and like their guitar and their bass
would spin on the axis. They could just twirl them,
you remember that. And they were fuzzy. They were just
really cool videos. And I remember just being like, Wow,

(42:34):
I like these videos a lot because they were super sexy.
But I recently read how like essentially a feminist defense
of those videos, and they pointed out that the people
who were the villains were people who are like sexually
harassing the three women in the Eliminator series and they
would always get their come up and and zz top

(42:55):
was always cheering for these three I guess muses or
Angels or whoever who would come out of the blue
and save the day.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, angels and Fishnet hosts exactly. I don't know if
there was ever a group that was less likely to
be MTV stars than zz top was.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
They were saying that there was a quote where they
were like, you know, we had basically had our run
in rock.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Not even rock and roll, Texas Blues band exactly.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
I think it was this in like Texas Monthly maybe magazine,
because yeah, they're from Texas, and then all of a sudden,
because of these videos, because of MTV, they had a
brand new career essentially. And I think Billy Gibbons was
the one who was quoter who said, like, we got
sixteen year old girls back as fans, you know, like so, yeah,
that's a really great point. They were extremely unlikely, and

(43:44):
that demonstrates the power of what MTV could do. If
you made a cool video people talked about, you could
have a brand new career on your hands.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I know, you want to shout out weird al somebody
that I've never been that into, but I was an
MTV kid, so I definitely saw and generally had a
laugh with a lot of those videos.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
They were great. He apparently had ten specials on MTV
over the years called ALTV. But yeah, that was another
one too, like you'd be like, have you seen weird
El's like a surgeon video? Or I lost on Jeopardy.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Stuff. And then one other one too that was a
really big video early on was the video for Fishheads
from Barnes and barn Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, I mean I don't remember that being a very
big song or video at all. I thought it was
just noteworthy because it was Bill Paxton or was that
a big song?

Speaker 2 (44:38):
I think it was one of those ones that made
people go watch MTV because it would come on sometimes. Okay,
I don't think it was like a huge hit or
anything like that, but it was one of those one
of those early videos that drew you to MTV by
word of mouth.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Yeah, kind of like mc scatcat.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
That's right, Paula abdul Yep, I remember that.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Uh wait, wait, we're getting nostalgic. We failed.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
I know, I know that failed a long time ago,
but we do have to mention the Hungry Like the
Wolf video from Duran Duran, because that was it certainly
wasn't the first, but that was maybe the best example
of music video as like a very cinematic you know
where where all of a sudden it was like the
band was in a movie and it was like, it's

(45:26):
not like they weren't a big band before, but Hungry
Like the Wolf really put them over the top.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, for sure, and just change the way that people
made videos too. They made a much more like it
was a movie.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah, a pretty good one, I thought.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, and a good song too.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Should we take our second break here at minute forty seven? Yeah,
all right, we'll be right back because there's plenty more
to talk about with MTV. So MTV was a pretty

(46:18):
big success in the mid eighties, obviously, so much so
that Turner Broadcasting TBS tried to compete with their cable
music channel I think the Country Music I'm sorry, the
cable Music channel CMC started around the same time. There
were a lot of imitators, most of them fizzled out.
I think the Turner one was bought out by MTV

(46:38):
for about a million bucks. But in nineteen eighty five,
Viacom Inc. Bought MTV from Warner, and leadership said, hey,
why don't we stop just playing random videos and start
sort of bucketing this stuff, And all of a sudden
they had thematic shows like one hundred and twenty Minutes
and Headbanger's Ball and Yo MTV Raps and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah. Yes, one hundred and twenty minutes always has a
soft spot in my heart because you had to stay
up on Sunday night. It started Sunday night at midnight,
so technically it started Monday morning at midnight and ran
for one hundred and twenty minutes till two am. It's
like the worst time slot in the history of time slots,
and yet that was the only place you could see

(47:24):
like Asusie in the Banchees video, or like Jesus and
Mary Chain or whoever. Like, that's the only place you
could see those videos, and it was worth staying up for.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, the great Matt Pinfield shout out to him as
host Club MTV in nineteen eighty seven with Downtown Julie Brown.
That was their dance show, their their sort of soul
trained American bandstand style show. I'd say just go listen
to the heavy metal episodes if you want to hear
more about head Banger's Ball, sure, but yo, MTV rap
started in nineteen eighty eight, and that was like run

(47:59):
DMC had been on thinking eighty four with rock Box.
But you o, MTV raps cannot be under or overestimated.
I guess as as what a role it played in
bringing hip hop and rap to the mainstream.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah, and if you want a new trivia question to
replace the Buggles video Killed the Radio Star, the first
rap video played on your own TV raps was Shinehead's
Chain Gang.

Speaker 4 (48:23):
Oh okay, do you remember that one?

Speaker 1 (48:26):
I don't not at all.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Actually, do you you know the sound of the men
working on the chain Gang?

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah? I know.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
It's like a hip hop version of that. Oh okay,
it's good, go listen to it.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah. They were also famous for banning some of these,
and again, you're going to get more attention by doing
something like that. So Inwa had some of their stuff banned.
Public Enemy the Great Song By the Time I Get
to Arizona was banned in nineteen ninety one, and then
also one of my favorite shows was Unplugged, Oh, started

(48:56):
in nineteen eighty nine, where they did you know they
had bands in studio, live in concert doing you know,
acoustic numbers of their of their hits, and some of
the unplugged albums became just sort of iconic, legendary vinyl
LPs for those bands just because people had never heard
them that way before, like Nirvana and Oasis and stuff

(49:19):
like that.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I was like, I didn't really
ever watch them TV unplugged. I wasn't very aware of it,
now that you said that Rivana song, Yes, I remember now.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Yeah, ari EM's was awesome, and you know, they had
some sort of obvious unplugged stuff like Bob Dylan and
Neil Young, but I think it was when the rock
bands did it, is when it got the most attention
and was maybe at its best.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
For sure, or Depeche Mode. So. One other thing that
was huge, just huge, that started out as just some
small thing that they tried, was in nineteen eighty six,
Allen Hunter took everybody to Daytona Beach and they basically
just covered spring Break. Yeah, and spring Break became an
annual event on MTV for decades to come. It was

(50:04):
just a huge deal. Every spring Break was covered and
it was just people like doing shots or dancing or whatever,
like on the beach, playing volleyball. It was just all
lame and dumb, but it was exactly the kind of
thing you wanted to see if it was like April
in Northern Ohio, because it didn't look like that outside

(50:24):
in April and Northern Ohio. So like it just brought
you down to the beach with all these beautiful people
and it was It was a great experience for sure.
And then that also kind of gave birth to Beach
MTV or MTV Beach House later on, which they would
basically just rent a beach house and broadcast from there
for the summer.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Yeah, it just made summer summer, you know what I'm saying, like.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
The official kickoff.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah yeah, or like even like in the middle of summer,
just seeing that in the morning, you know, getting ready
to go hang out with friends because school was out.
It just it made it was like a punctuation mark
for summer. It just made it more of a summer
to me.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, for sure, I totally agree. MTV News was another
non music show that's kind of where we're headed in
this segment, and it was a very big deal. I
remember that they had a very iconic intro to with
the typewriter spelling out MTV News and that sound that
it made. Yeah, do that louder, You just did it great, Well,

(51:23):
your first try was better. Kurt Loader, though, was a
veteran rock journalist and he was sort of the main
face in nineteen eighty seven. But you know they also
had like Chris Connolly ended up being the movie guy.
He was the MTV news guy for a while. I
had many many crushes via MTV News, like Tabitha Soren

(51:46):
and Serena alt Schole, and even a little bit of Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah, Kennedy. Remember Duffy?

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Oh, I remember Duffy. She lived in a friend of
mine's building in New York and the Greenwich Village in
the mid nineties, and I saw in the elevator once
and almost passed out.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
I'll bet I think the one who could top them
all though, was Daisy Flinn Taste.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Oh yeah, I forgot about her, jay Zy Flints.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Daisy Taste. So anyway, moving on, there was a game
show on MTV for I think just like a year
maybe called Remote Control came on in nineteen eighty seven,
and if anyone asks you what MTV's first regular non
music programming was it was Remote Control and I loved

(52:31):
Remote Control me too.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
It had to be more than a year because ken
Ober was the host, unless they just replaced the host midyear,
which I don't remember because another crush Kry Wererer, took
over for ken Ober at a certain point. But Remote
Control was very funny and a great game show for
people our age, and to me, it was most noteworthy
as launching the careers of Colin Quinn, yes, who was

(52:56):
the sidekick, and a young Adam Sandler and Dennis got
their start there.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Yeah, they were both writers and then Adam Sandler also
played some early characters, one of which was stud Boy.
But it was great. I had one of the all
time best sets of not just any game show, but
any TV show. It was set in Kenover's parents' basement
and it was all about all the questions were about
TV and TV history and stuff. It was really wonderful.

(53:22):
Like the people the players played from recliners and if
I remember correctly, if you were if you lost you
like the recliner went sailing backwards through the woods. So
that was a show.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yeah, and it's funny. I haven't I didn't watch any clips,
but in my brain it just popped into my head.
The intro was something like, uh, I wasn't like the
other kids or something like that.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Okay, it was Kenny wasn't like the other kids. T mattered, nothing,
nothing else that. The girls said yes, but he said no.
Now he's got his own game show.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
Do you remember that or did you look that up?

Speaker 2 (53:56):
I remembered it. I did not look up a word
of that.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
That's so funny.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Man.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
I knew there was something there about not being like
the other kids.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Because yeah, he just wanted to watch TV. So now
he has a game show about TV.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
House of Style nineteen eighty nine fashion show hosted by
Cindy Crawford was huge as far as comedy goes. It
turns out beyond remote control being very funny, they launched
like they were sneakily. One of the great comedy incubators
of the eighties. I feel like yeah and nineties, Yeah, yeah,
into the nineties because The State the great To me,

(54:30):
the best sketch show of all time was The State.
Oh Yeah, from ninety four to ninety five on MTV.
The Ben Stiller Show in nineteen ninety was amazing and
very Underseen and Underrated?

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Did you watch that when it was on?

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (54:44):
Yeah, I did not.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yeah, I was into all of that.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
I went So that launched Jane Garoffalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross,
Judd Apatow, Andy Dick for Better or Worse, Ben Stiller
obviously because before that he was just Jerry Stiller's kid. Yeah,
and this was where he introduced himself to the world.
And we have Severance thanks to the show, So thanks
a lot, MTV. But it also brought together Bob Odenkirk

(55:10):
and David Cross, yeah, with Dinos Demettopoulos, who was also
a writer on the show, with them, and they went
on to make a mister Show.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Now that actually might be my favorite sketch show.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
I think so too. But there I went back, so
I was like, I haven't seen a second of this show,
and I found a great sketch with Bob Odenkirk as
Charles Manson. Yeah, yeah, but Charles Manson is Lassie. It's
like a black and white parody of Lassie, but rather
than Lassie the dog, it's Charles Manson who's like the
family dog, but he's just saying crazy stuff. And Bob

(55:42):
Ogenkirk does a perfect Charles Manson.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
It's so good and that's where Ben Siler started doing
the Tom Cruise impressions. And yeah, such a good show,
even though I wasn't into it, we have to talk
about totally Polly.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Polly's show ran for five year or so. It was
actually a pretty big hit, The Oiz. Yeah, The Wiz
and then one of my favorites, which got you know,
NTB had such good programming for a while there with
these other shows Liquid Television in nineteen ninety one, ten
years at least before Adult Swim came on, you could
be a kid that was watching this crazy, weird, experimental

(56:19):
animation on television.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Yeah, liquid television. Right, did you watch a Flux?

Speaker 1 (56:25):
I loved aon Flex. It was mind blowing.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Yeah, if you've never seen am Flex, this is like
a decade before Adult Swim came out. And this was
not a time like there weren't such a thing as
cartoons for adults. You had to basically watch heavy metal
over and over again. Yeah, maybe Akira or something like that.
This was like a cavalcade, a showcase of adult, weird, bizarre,
hilarious cartoons. And it's actually where Beavis and butt Head

(56:50):
got its start. Therefore, where Mike Judge got his start,
A on Flex was super cool and in addition to
just kind of launching some careers, it just laid the
groundwork and showed that there's a huge appetite for people
who are no longer in high school, who really love pot,
maybe ascid a little bit and watch TV, are willing

(57:14):
to stay up late to watch cartoons. This, this showed
that they were out there.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
I didn't know until today that the animated show Daria
was a spin off of Beavis and butt Head, that
Daria was a character briefly on that show until you
pointed that out.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah, she was one of their classmates at high school.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yeah, so Daria was big. We can't, you know, we're
running so long, we can't like dive into all these
but we have to at least mention shows like Jackass
and Cribs. Yeah, and then the birth of reality TV
eventually with stuff like The Osbourne's and Jersey Shore and Punked.
But it all got started in nineteen ninety two with
the Real World, which I mean clearly. I mean, you know,

(57:55):
there was the seventies PBS show and American Family, but
as far as the teenagers watching stuff Reality TV. I
feel like was birth with the real world.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Yeah, and you can make a case. My hypothesis is
that you could trace pretty much every problem that we
have with the world today back to Reality TV, and
ergo back to the real world.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
That show is really good for a while. I will
I stand behind the real world. I don't remember what season.
I feel like it really jumped the shark, but I
know that there are a lot of people that say
it was the year that they somebody got in the
shower with somebody else and it became really just sort
of like people were getting on there just because they
knew they could be famous. But I feel like it

(58:42):
had a more pure intent before that, as a kind
of a weird social experiment.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Yeah. No, it wasn't the show itself that was problematic.
It was the foundation that it created, the legacy it created.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Because I mean, if you like reality TV, great, good
on you. I'm glad that it's out there for you.
But it wrecked TV until the streamers came along. Like,
if you liked a written, scripted show, ts for you.
Because everyone went all in on reality for years and
years and years. You had to basically get a subscription

(59:16):
to HBO to watch like a decent TV show for
a long time because reality TV got so popular and
it was so cheap to make.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Yeah, for sure, I don't want people to get mad
if we don't mention Carson Daily and TRL. This was
in the sort of days where I was fading out
of MTV, so I wasn't as into it. But Carson
Daily did a fine job on Total Request Live. And
I'm also a big fan of the great Dave Holmes,
who's a really good dude in real life and does

(59:47):
some great things.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
He says, was he on Total Request Live?

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Yeah, I don't know if he took over for Carson
Daily or sort of pinch hitter or sometimes sometimes, but
I know he was definitely one of the hosts.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
So a lot of people are like, what's this MTV
you're talking about? And there's a good reason for that.
And the reason why is because MTV just started to
die a thousand deaths by new channels and networks coming on.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Like that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
It would made a big decision when it went to
half hour shows or non music shows, even in part because,
as was explained later, if you are watching MTV in
its original form. You're like, you have no control whatsoever
on what's going to come up next. And I remember
doing this quite clearly. You'd be watching a perfectly good

(01:00:38):
winger video and then all of a sudden comes, I
don't know, some terrible video. I'm not going to call
out anybody's favorite artists, and you would just immediately turn
the channel because you knew you could turn back in
three minutes and see what else was next. And they
just got bled by that, and they found that half
hour shows kept you in longer, and if those shows

(01:01:00):
weren't made up of music videos but an actual narrative
over the course of a half an hour, they lost
less and less viewers. And so it just became sensible
for them to get away from music. But fear not,
because they said, if you still want music videos, don't worry,
we will have you covered for the rest of your
life with MTV two.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
That's right. MTV two launched in nineteen ninety six. It
was like, Hey, it's just gonna be music videos. We
Pinky swears. Less than ten years later, it was mostly
reality shows and not music videos. YouTube really sealed the
fate because you could just watch any music video ever
by just typing it in your search bar on YouTube

(01:01:41):
like don Style. Yeah, and yeah, I mean I watch
music videos. There's still a show I can't remember what
it's called that I see on Hulu that just runs
music videos. So I'll put that on sometimes if I'm
like folding laundry, hmm, okay, for nostalgia. It's kind of nice.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
If you go on MTV still around I believe MTV
two is still around two, there is a ninety eight
point seven five percent chance that you will find an
episode of Ridiculousness playing. Yeah, it's been It carries MTV
almost single handedly. It's a it's a show where they

(01:02:18):
just basically put together hilarious clips. It's like it's like
America's funniest home videos for nihilists and skateboarders basically, right, Yeah,
and it's a good little show. You remember our friend
Hampton Yaut who was in one of our variety shows.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
In LA That's the only reason I know about Ridiculousness.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Yep, he was one of the writers on ridiculous This
is a cute little show, but it has propped up
MTV so much that it's been on for fourteen years.
Since twenty eleven, yet somehow it is in season forty five. Wow,
that's how many episodes they crank out to keep MTV going.

(01:02:58):
So hats off to Rob dry Deck.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
It's the House Hunters of a TV.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Yeah, essentially for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Well, before we leave, I do want to quickly kind
of mention the MTV contests. If you were a kid
in the eighties, they had these crazy, crazy contests that
you could enter and they always seem to kind of
want to one up the last as far as what
they would do. Yeah, and they were I mean it
was like, you know, you can win bon Jovi's childhood home,

(01:03:25):
you can win a pink house from John Mellencamp or
John Cougar at the time in his small town or whatever.
But they were crazy. There was one very famous story
of the party with Van Halen for two days, and
this was in nineteen eighty four, and this I was
about to say, poor guy, it's probably the best thing
that ever happened to him. This guy named Kurt Jeffries

(01:03:46):
has a legendary story of basically like they took it seriously.
They weren't like, hey, let's just kind of get this
kid in here and whatever. Signed something like they partied
with them. They got him drunk and gave him cocaine
and got a groupie to have sex with him in
a bathroom, and like he did the whole rock star thing.
Van Halen was very intent, Like apparently he woke up

(01:04:09):
on day two and was like, I can't I've got
to go home. And Alex van Halen was like shoving
a beer in a space and was like, you've got
to do this, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
He said, you can't leave the spot until you drink
that beer. And it was this it was a tall boy. Yeah. Yeah,
I was gonna say, after you rattle all that off,
that that was just day one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Yeah, that was day one. There was a day two
and this was.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
This was a sponsored contest by MTV.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Yeah, there's no way you could do that so these
days obviously, but they had a bunch of those, like,
you know, party with the band. I know that the
police had a sort of a disaster of a contest
where they were supposed to fly on their private jet
with the band, and I think that went all pear shaped.
I remember very clearly Madonna had a contest that you
at home could make the video for True Blue, and

(01:04:56):
I just remember seeing like bad homemade video after a
bad homemade video of True Blue, over and over and
over again, just so I could vote via phone. Yeah,
the contests, those are a lot of fun. There are
a lot more kind of fun ones. There's a kind
of a cool page six article that covers some of
the wackier contests they had.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Yeah, this is definitely worth three And thanks for sending
that to me. Oh, chuck, you got anything else?

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
No, I mean we missed a ton, So it's just
kind of one of those episodes you tried to stuff
as much as we could in here.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Yep, and keep an ero for VH one, which should
be following this one right after right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Yeah, I said we skip listener mail even it's been
so long, and just say go with God, go watch
some music videos.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Yeah, everybody's tired. Tick the day off, everybody exactly. If
you want to send us an email, you can send
it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherevery you listen to your favorite shows.
M