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From Beavis to Britney: MTV turns 25
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer
Mon Jul 31, 12:25 PM ET


No one knows how to throw a party like MTV. So there must be quite a bash planned for Aug. 1, celebrating 25 years on the air. Right?

Sorry. MTV is staying in that night. There are no plans to even mention the birthday.

When your average viewer is 20 years old — too young to remember Martha Quinn, not even born when Madonna buckled on her "boy toy" belt — perhaps it's wise not to mention you're 25. MTV wants to be the perpetual adolescent.

On a relentless mission to stay hip, MTV casually discards generations. Yesterday, "Beavis and Butt-head." Today, "Laguna Beach."

And at each stop, MTV changes pop culture.

Without MTV, you might not have reality television. Commercials wouldn't have vertigo-inducing quick cuts. Musicians wouldn't need to look like models to survive. Kelly Osbourne wouldn't have gotten near a recording studio. And only seamstresses would know about wardrobe malfunctions.

Our birthday present is a look back at 25 memorable MTV moments:

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1. THE DEBUT: Aug. 1, 1981. The first video? The slyly prophetic "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the now-forgotten Buggles. Only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see it. Sometimes the screen would go black when someone at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR. Within a few years, millions of kids demanded their parents buy cable so they could see MTV. Along with CNN, it led TV's transition out of the three-channel world. "This was the fuse that lit the cable explosion," said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

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2. BEAT IT: March 31, 1983. Michael Jackson becomes the first black artist with a video on MTV. The segregation was MTV's early shame, ironic considering its later role in popularizing rap. And the early snub wasn't forgotten: "You don't have all of music television when you are leaving things out," says Los Lonely Boys singer Henry Garza.

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3. THRILLER: Dec. 2, 1983. Less a video than a 14-minute mini-movie with Vincent Price, ghouls and goblins, the premiere of Jackson's "Thriller" was an event. MTV gave it a set time on the schedule — several, even. It was the apotheosis of the idea of music videos as an art form. With director John Landis involved, it also was proof that Hollywood's finest weren't looking down upon what are essentially promo clips.

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4. MADONNA BUSTS OUT: Sept. 14, 1984. Performing "Like a Virgin" at the first Video Music Awards, Madonna popped out of a cake dressed in a wedding gown and writhed through her hit. At that moment, Madonna became a superstar, put the VMAs on the map and set an enduring tone. Who cares about those ugly "moon man" trophies? What matters is making the audience gasp.

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5. MONEY FOR NOTHING: 1985. The Dire Straits song was about MTV, mocked MTV and became the band's biggest hit because of MTV. It was one of the first videos to feature computer animation, and Sting made a clever cameo echoing his role in iconic "I want my MTV" ads. The rules for music stardom had changed. Being photogenic was now crucial; an eye-catching video made hits. "It was America's first national radio network," says record executive Phil Quartararo.

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6. BYE-BYE VJs: Original video jock J.J. Jackson's contract expired in 1985. Nina Blackwood followed him out the next year and so did Martha Quinn, breaking the hearts of countless teenage boys. Alan Hunter and Mark Goodman were next. Only Adam Curry lasted into the '90s. MTV refused to follow its aging first fans, courting teens instead. It also realized that airing videos was a dead end and began aggressively developing other programming. Those were probably the most important financial decisions MTV ever made.

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7. SPRING BREAK: March 21, 1985: College students who couldn't make it south in person could turn on MTV to catch the party. Each year it returns, a drunken bash with young, firm, scantily clad bodies oozing with sweat and undulating to the music. Stop us! We need a cold shower. "There were people who looked like they were having sex on the dance floor," VJ Suzie Castillo says about last year's festivities in Cancun. MTV's spring break coverage arguably gave rise to the "Girls Gone Wild" video series, where the breasts didn't need to be pixelated.

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8. RAP BLASTS OFF: Aug. 6, 1986. It's no coincidence that "Yo! MTV Raps!" premiered about the same time rap started becoming the dominant music form for young America. Hip white kids like Rick Rubin or the Beastie Boys may have loved rap before, but "Yo! MTV Raps!" brought it into every suburban living room. "Going from the network that was called on the carpet for not having blacks to this was a huge leap, and it was the right one for MTV," says Christina Norman, MTV's first black president.

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9. PEE-WEE'S RETURN: Sept. 5, 1991. It was a hard fall for Pee-wee Herman, from star of one of television's most popular kids' shows to a national punch line when an undercover officer saw him masturbating in an adult theater. Herman went undercover himself for more than a month until creeping out onstage at the opening of that year's VMAs. "Heard any good jokes lately?" Herman asked, to howls of laughter.

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10. ENTER GRUNGE: Sept. 29, 1991: Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video killed the hair metal scene and signaled the ascendancy of grunge. The images themselves were an arresting accent, with the tattooed cheerleaders and what seemed like an underwater pep rally in a dank gymnasium. "The band, the sound and the imagery in the video was sort of a breath of fresh air — or a scream," said MTV series development guru Tony DiSanto.

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11. CLAPTON UNPLUGGED: March 11, 1992. Only the most desperate of fading 1980s bands — Nuclear Valdez, Squeeze, the Alarm — responded to MTV's first requests to show off their acoustic chops. But fans responded to the intimacy and stars soon lined up: Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen (who got nervous and insisted on an electric guitar) — and Eric Clapton, in his first performance since his son died after falling from a skyscraper window. "Everybody who was there felt something special was going on," says Van Toffler, president of MTV's music services. Clapton had to be talked into releasing the show on CD, and it became his biggest-selling album.

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12. BOXERS OR BRIEFS?: April 19, 1994. Two years in office, President Clinton submitted to 90 minutes of questions on complex policy issues by 16-to-20-year-olds before a live MTV audience. Everything else was forgotten when 17-year-old Laetitia Thompson of Potomac, Md., asked: "Mr. President, the world's dying to know. Is it boxers or briefs?" "Usually briefs," the president replied, looking slightly non-plussed. Today, most presidential candidates use MTV to reach first-time voters.

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13. HEH-HEH. COOL: March 24, 1994: Who'd have thunk that "Beavis and Butt-head" would make the cover of Rolling Stone? When Toffler received a pilot tape of two adolescent cartoon characters playing baseball with a frog, he watched it nearly 100 times. "You have a feeling in your bones that there's something different about it that's unique and it will either flop miserably or succeed brilliantly." It was stupid, gross-out humor — but many older people secretly wished they could act that way.

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14. REALITY BITES: June 23, 1994. It's hard to recall a time when setting up a group of strangers in a camera-filled home was a new idea. But the 1992 debut of "The Real World" "invented reality TV," says Thompson. "It's absolutely ground zero." And the inclusion of Pedro Zamora, who was gay and soon to die of AIDS, in the 1994 season did more to promote tolerance than hundreds of public service announcements. "It was probably the most riveting piece of television I had ever seen," says Brian Graden, then a young, gay man and now an MTV programming exec. "I had never seen someone like myself reflected back to me ... it really changed things for a whole generation of gay people."

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15. FEEDBACK LOOP: April 14, 1998: Jesse Camp wins the first "I Wanna Be a VJ" contest. Stuck in a rut, MTV was searching for some way to make its audience feel connected to the network. The wild-haired, willfully outrageous Camp seemed sent from central casting, and it was the audience doing the casting.

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16. TIMES SQUARE LIVE: Oct. 22, 1998. The Backstreet Boys shut down Times Square during a "Total Request Live" appearance. The ruckus cemented "TRL's" role as pop culture's home page, with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears as king and queen of the new scene.

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17. JIGGLE IT: Sept. 9, 1999. When Lil' Kim presented a VMA with a pasty-clad breast, Diana Ross couldn't resist a playful fondle. Lucky Ross wasn't there eight years earlier, when Prince performed wearing pants with the butt cut out. A year later, Howard Stern parodied that look by descending from the sky as "Fartman."

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18. TIPSY: Oct. 1, 2000. Thinking about "Jackass" Johnny Knoxville getting tipped over in the port-a-potty still makes you hold your nose. Knoxville specialized in painful on-camera tricks, and "Jackass" quickly became MTV's most popular show. Unfortunately for MTV — or maybe fortunately if there's no such thing as bad publicity — many stunts were copied by viewers.

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19. MARIAH'S MELTDOWN: July 19, 2001. No one knew quite how to react when Carey made a surprise appearance on "TRL" pushing an ice cream cart filled with popsicles. A nervous Carson Daly kept trying to cut to a commercial, but Carey wouldn't stop talking. She said she had a gift for him — then took off her oversized T-shirt to reveal a tight tank top and skimpy shorts. A week later Carey was checked into a hospital for "extreme exhaustion."

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20. $ @ !: March 5, 2002: Sharrrr-rronnnn! The first bleeped-out swear word on "The Osbournes" premiere was followed by 58 others. For a while, the foggy-headed rocker, his type-A wife and self-involved kids became America's first family, if only for the sheer weirdness of their life. They quickly wore thin — and were responsible for a rash of dull has-beens who thought their lives would make great television — but not before Sharon got her own talk show, daughter Kelly a recording contract and son Jack a stint in rehab.

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21. DOGGING EMINEM: Aug. 29, 2002: The rap star was in no mood to hear Triumph the Insult Comic Dog chew over his feud with Moby. So when approached by the puppet on the VMAs, Eminem delivered a sucker punch and then flew into a rage backstage. "He was really furious," said MTV executive vice president Dave Sirulnick, "which was startling because here was this guy who built his career on dissing and dishing. And this was a puppet."

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22. ASHTON PUNKS JUSTIN: March 17, 2003. "Candid Camera" with an edge, the debut of Kutcher's series "Punk'd" had a crew posing as the "Tax Enforcement Agency" seizing Justin Timberlake's possessions after saying he owed $900,000 in back taxes. The title is now ensconced in the popular lexicon.

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23. CHICKEN OR TUNA?: Aug. 19, 2003. "Newlyweds" followed the telegenic Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as they navigated marital bliss. They truly became famous when cameras caught Simpson confused by whether a can of Chicken of the Sea contained tuna. Presto! America had a new favorite dim blonde.

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24. THE KISS: Aug. 28, 2003. It was MTV's idea to bring back Madonna for a reprise of "Like a Virgin" for the 20th video music awards, and MTV's idea to pair her with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. The open-mouthed kiss that she planted on the two young stars? That was pure Madonna, and it outranked the creepy Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley for most memorable kiss.

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25. STEPHEN & LC: Nov. 26, 2004. Viewers were gripped by the love triangle on new MTV hit "Laguna Beach," and Kristin's partying on spring break in this episode temporarily cost her her boyfriend. MTV's original idea was a reality version of "Beverly Hills 90210," but they ended up with a reality version of "The O.C." instead. The real-life soap opera breaks convention by unfolding slowly, with none of the reality TV cliches like confessional interviews. "Again," Thompson says, "MTV is two steps ahead."

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quote: Pravin Ratnam

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Too bad it's just the videos and not the original VJs except in clips.

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quote: Aaron Sisemore

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Unless you plan on exhuming J.J. Jackson and doing a 'Weekend At Bernies' with him, that'll never happen. (J.J. died in 2004).

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I think he meant airing the original VJ segments as they aired in 1981.

Which would have ruled.

The thing about MTV on launch day was there wasn't much for them to play. Few artists made videos at all back then. I think I remember reading back then that they had all of maybe 200 videos total to program a 24-7 channel with.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-01-2006, 08:15 PM:
 
200 videos for a 24 hour segment?

Hell, that's a LOT in today's corporate-infected music broadcasting world where you WILL hear the same 10 songs again and again for the next 19,898,884,887 years!

That's no joke either. Those suits in those board rooms actually think like that. Let's feed the masses the same flavor of tired, vanilla, re-tred music and still expect our quarterly profits to grow over each calendar period.

If only one of those guys was near me I would clobber him in the face with a shovel. Highly deserved punishment.

 

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Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 08-01-2006, 08:56 PM:
 

quote:

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13. HEH-HEH. COOL: March 24, 1994: Who'd have thunk that "Beavis and Butt-head" would make the cover of Rolling Stone? When Toffler received a pilot tape of two adolescent cartoon characters playing baseball with a frog, he watched it nearly 100 times.

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That pilot was shown (yes, in 35mm and run by yours truly) at the Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation about a year and a half before B&B's MTV debut and four years before their so-called "big screen debut", to enthusiastic midnight-show crowds high on who-knows-what. Never knew such an inane pair of animated characters (especially those created by someone with a degree in physics) would go on to such great success...


 

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Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 08-01-2006, 11:02 PM:
 
As Sam said, I meant the original VJ footage to give us a sense of timetravel. Instead they got some contemporary VH1 Classic host talk during music segments with a few seconds of old VJ clips.

While I am more into rock, I have no problem with pressure being applied on MTV at that time to diversify. Watching MTV Day one stuff is pure torture on VH1 Classic. The rap stuff added made MTV better. Beastie Boys, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy were all welcome additions to the channel.

Even now, while there is so much BET Reject type videos on MTV or MTV Hits(as both MTV and MTV2 rarely play videos), some of the better videos have come from rap(I just think Missy Elliot and early Busta Rhymes videos are a trip). Nickelback and bunch of young Canadian totally unoriginal rockers is not something that excites me. I would rather see White Stripes type bands .

MTV has a nice scam going. THey will introduce a new channel to the lineup claiming its the new 24 hour music channel and once cable companies accept it as they need a music niche on their cable tiers, MTV will add some non music programming to increase the ratings(since most programming beats music programming on a ratings basis). That is what they did with MTV2. Soon they might start doing that with MTV Hits. VH1 Classic has already started showing occasional movies that used to be shown on VH1. I hope cable companies will call MTV on their bluff and refuse to add any more channels on teh lineup, and then add their own 24 hour music channel in hidef if possible. Right now, I get more music entertainment from INHD and INHD2 than any of the MTV channels.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-02-2006, 12:33 PM:
 
I've never been able to get into newer rap music, much less even tolerate what is very often a highly toxic message. So much of today's rap music does everything to glorify violence and cruelty, promote brash materialism and objectification of women.

I liked the rap music that did more to send messages of empowerment and social awareness, like that of Public Enemy and KRS-One. Rage Against the Machine hit on some of the same tones, but was more of a rock group than rap group. All this gangsta rap shit these days is pretty bankrupt. And all the white kids listening to it and trying to act black is way beyond silly.
 

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Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 08-06-2006, 06:12 AM:
 
Other than the Buggles video which I still love, one video did stand out from the Day ONe videos played on Vh1 Classic. Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. Crazy ass white makeup with an unhinged looking Kate Bush singing in a really high voice. I heard the song before, but first time checking out this slightly creepy video. My favorite video from Day 1. I go on You TUbe and see that she made an even less restrained Red Dress video prior to the White Dress video.
 

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Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 08-06-2006, 10:28 AM:
 
Agreeing with Darryl. Headbanger's Ball is, at least, still on a couple times each week on MTV2, but that doesn't make up for the last half of that "history". I stopped hoping that network would come to its senses & title when the rest of TV became basically the same concept... Disassociated lifestyle crap & personal drama that networks execs think reaches out to viewers.

That & having all the ugly-long commercial blocks filled with diet pill, body spray, ringtone ads, aside from all the emo-rock that currently embodies what record labels are selling as music.

Beck's Sexx Laws... Best video ever, though
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-06-2006, 12:45 PM:
 
I know everyone who watched MTV in the early days has to remember this. I know I do because it seems every time I turned the channel on it was playing. Psychedelic furs "Love My Way" I got so sick and freaking tired of that video. But one of the things I liked the most was the concerts they ran every Saturday Night. Ones that I can remember are:

Sammy Hagar: Three Lock Box tour
Journey: Escape tour which is on DVD now
Judas Priest: Screaming for Vengance tour One of J.J. Jacksons favorite bands
Ozzy Osbourne: Diary of a Madman tour with Brad Gillis on guitar.
Twisted Sister
 

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Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 08-06-2006, 02:50 PM:
 
MTV has been nothing but crap for the last 20 years. They basically stopped playing videos and started doing their own shows aimed at the teenage audience. They started producing so much crap, they had to put MTV 2 on the air. Wasn't THIS channel meant for videos? I haven't actually turned it on for years now, so I don't know. In my opinion, the only good, original program to come out of MTV is Beavis and Butthead. I certainly miss the old days with the good videos and VJ's and would love to see them re-air the glory days of MTV...maybe MTV Classic...but then, it would probably turn into more reality programming. MTV is dead and has been dead for 20 years.
 

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Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 08-06-2006, 04:03 PM:
 
25 years ago, I had a c-band dish. I saw the first hour of m-tv from the first minute. Likely no one else did since cable systems didn't even know what m-tv was.

Not much software to play, so they repeated endlessly. As I recall: "Video killed the radio star," was the first song. Louis
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-06-2006, 04:04 PM:
 
I don't like MTV any more either. The Greco factor on it is OK, but the camera cuts are so fast and the handheld camera work is so shaky that you can't get a good look at anything anyway.

You do have to remember that MTV is aimed at one demographic only: Age 13 - 24. Ask people from that age bracket, you'd probably find a lot more fans. Some of us remember the good old days when videos were the norm, but the vast majority of their current audience has NEVER seen that format on MTV, so if they were to suddenly shift back to playing videos 24/7, their core demographic would vanish to other outlets playing stupid reality/date shows and such.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 08-06-2006, 06:18 PM:
 
I wish there was a way that I didn't have to pay for or receive MTV (and about 139 other channels out of the 140 that I have) on my dish.
 

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Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 08-06-2006, 09:02 PM:
 

quote: Mark J. Marshall

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I wish there was a way that I didn't have to pay for or receive MTV (and about 139 other channels out of the 140 that I have) on my dish.

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There is...get rid of it.
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 08-06-2006, 09:14 PM:
 
I love some of the shows on MTV... Pimp MY Ride, Room Raiders, Date My Mom, Next!, etc. Great stuff to watch while doing cardio at the gym.
 

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 08-06-2006, 11:01 PM:
 
Darryl:

I should have mentioned that I would like to keep my HD channels and one or two others. It's the plethora or useless channels (like MTV) that I hate paying for. Especially when I feel like some of the crap they put out is damaging to our culture.

Would MTV survive if cable/dish subscribers weren't forced to pay for it?
 

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 08-07-2006, 11:24 PM:
 
That would be a very interesting way to sort out the cable channels. How many cable channels would survive if you paid for each and every cable channel separately?
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 08-08-2006, 06:11 PM:
 
I agree with some here about the decline of MTV. For the last several years, ever since they went to the degrading niggar rap from the fun "regular" rap like Run DMC, etc., I have turned off the music videos.

But, I have followed and enjoyed shows such as Bevis & Butthead, Jackass, and many others.

Now, I'm totally hooked on "NEXT" and "Parental Control"! Those are hilarious!
 

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Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 08-08-2006, 06:39 PM:
 

quote: Ian Price

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That would be a very interesting way to sort out the cable channels. How many cable channels would survive if you paid for each and every cable channel separately?

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quote: Phil Hill

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For the last several years, ever since they went to the degrading niggar rap from the fun

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Do you hear that? Sounds like the PC police sirens. They should be here in no time.
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 08-08-2006, 06:49 PM:
 
Yeah Chris, the truth will always prevail.... I'm NOT into PC! I just tell it like it is...

If ya can't stand the heat, get outta the kitchen.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 08-09-2006, 01:12 PM:
 
After 23 years I STILL don't get why people pay ANYTHING for channels that run commercials.
 

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