Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know We want our MTV! About this episode 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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1:07 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:16 Josh Clark? 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.
1:39 Josh Clark? That's, I'll be able to do that with my dying breath. It's so ingrained in my head.
1:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, how can you not picture Neil Armstrong jumping off onto that moon?
1:49 Josh Clark? Yep.
1:49 Speaker 03 With an MTV flag?
1:51 Josh Clark? For sure. Like a multi-changing MTV flag that's just drawn over the, the American flag. It's just iconic.
2:00 Speaker 03 Yeah. But hey, people, 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.
2:14 Josh Clark? I think it would be impossible not to.
2:16 Speaker 03 Impossible.
2:16 Josh Clark? As a matter of fact, I challenge us to try not to be nostalgic in this episode.
2:20 Speaker 03 I've already ruined it. I just air guitar the MTV theme.
2:24 Josh Clark? We'll exclude that.
2:25 Speaker 03 Okay.
2:27 Josh Clark? 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 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.
2:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. And this was not the beginning of music videos. Music videos were, 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 1958 from The Big Bopper as maybe the first music video, because it was not just a film of a band playing their song, but there was some performative theatrics to it.
3:20 Josh Clark? I saw one earlier by 16 years with Cab Calloway doing Minnie the Moocher.
3:25 Speaker 03 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 1975 was one of the big ones. And they expressly did that so they didn't have to lip sync a performance on Top of the Pops.
3:54 Josh Clark? 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 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.
4:27 Speaker 03 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 1976, a little on the nose.
4:43 Speaker 03 The USA Network, and I do remember this, in 1978, they had a show called Video Concert Hall.
4:49 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
4:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, 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 in lockstep with the story of cable television. By the way, big thanks to Olivia for this and a little hint, upcoming on Thursday, we're gonna round it out with an episode on VH1.
5:11 Josh Clark? What?
5:12 Speaker 03 Yes, you knew that.
5:13 Josh Clark? For real?
5:14 Speaker 03 You didn't know that?
5:15 Josh Clark? No.
5:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, I told you in an email, let's do MTV and VH1 this week.
5:19 Josh Clark? I must have missed that.
5:20 Speaker 03 All right. Well, I'm glad we, you're talking about MTV, we'd be in bad shape.
5:25 Josh Clark? For real?
5:26 Speaker 03 But the rise of cable as like 10 million subscribers in 1975 to 40 million in 1985, that was really what grew MTV was, was cable being a thing and the US government saying, hey, cable, it's a little looser, you can kind of do a little more. And then cable companies saying, hey, maybe we should start thinking about kind of different kinds of channels we've never had before.
5:53 Josh Clark? 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 locked down. When cable opened, it was like, what do you want to do? You want to make a channel all for kids? Great, let's, let's found Pinwheel and then eventually call it Nickelodeon. You want to show reruns? We'll call it Nick at Night. You want to show little kids, even smaller kids, programs? Great, we'll make a channel called Nick Jr. 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. And there was a guy named Bob Pittman who was working on
6:38 Josh Clark? it. And he happens to be the CEO of iHeart Media, who we work for. And he's one of the, the big players with, with the founding of MTV and Is usually the person that people will tell you who know about this kind of thing, who if you ask them who founded MTV, the answer will usually be Bob Pittman. 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.
7:10 Speaker 03 Are you talking about Mike Nesmith?
7:12 Josh Clark? I am.
7:13 Speaker 03 Okay. This was in 1975. Mike Nesmith of the TV show and the musical group, The Monkees. 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 proto MTV. They had comedians introducing music videos, like promotional videos that these record companies were making.
7:39 Josh Clark? Right.
7:40 Speaker 03 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 was, they'd launched Nickelodeon, they were kind of experimenting around. And in 1979, American Express bought half of that. And that new company, John Lack worked for, he was the COO. And he 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 miss. The movie channel was great.
8:10 Josh Clark? That was my favorite one, too. I don't know why, but it was my favorite.
8:14 Speaker 03 Because it was only movies.
8:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, I guess so.
8:17 Speaker 03 I bet you 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.
8:26 Josh Clark? I just want to see Outland. What's the problem?
8:29 Speaker 03 Oh, man. You ain't 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 TV1. And they went, no, no, that's already a thing. 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 right.
9:00 Josh Clark? Yeah. And don't, 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 like the corporate nitty gritty of it. So he said, just buy me out and I'll go along my way. But he did essentially kind of come up with the concept and the format. And then Pittman and Lack took it over with a couple of other guys, Fred Seabert and Alan Goodman, whose experience, I think up to that point, had been working together at a Columbia University student radio station.
9:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:38 Josh Clark? So these people are, were all young, pretty hip. It's the early eighties. And again, this, 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, because again, record companies were giving these things away for free and saying, yes, play them via Condeos. It will only help us if you play these things on TV.
10:13 Speaker 03 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, Connell, like, I gotta say something about MTV. I said, is that verboten? Is that not the kind of thing? He's like, oh no, man. He was like, you should definitely say something. And I met Bob and I was like, Mr. 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 10 years old, gallooned to my television, watching MTV as, 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
10:55 Speaker 03 like you doing that same thing. Otherwise, it would not have been a success. So he thanked me, which I thought was very cool.
11:00 Josh Clark? Well, you, you have to finish the story all the way.
11:03 Speaker 03 I don't, what was the end?
11:05 Josh Clark? That he came around his desk with tears in his eyes and embraced you for a good minute, Connell said.
11:13 Speaker 03 No, no, no, no, he did not. But I think I touched him maybe a bit. I don't know. Who can tell? He sent me a bottle of tequila one Christmas, so.
11:20 Josh Clark? I got one of those, too.
11:22 Speaker 03 Oh, well, see, I guess you didn't make him cry, though, did you?
11:26 Josh Clark? No, but I touched him.
11:27 Speaker 03 That's right. 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 the cast, which we're going to talk about, but you know, like the bump, the video bumpers and stuff like that. So they brought in, again, teams of friends to do this stuff.
11:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, there was a, I guess, a guy named Frank Olinsky, who was a friend of Fred Seabert. 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 more recognizable than MTV. In part because it spells out the name in the logo, so you kind of know exactly what the logo is for. But it's still pretty recognizable.
12:25 Speaker 03 It's a great logo.
12:26 Josh Clark? 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 Elias and Jonathan Peterson. And they based it on the kinks. You really got me.
12:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's, you know, similar, I guess.
12:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, you can definitely tell when you hear that, but I never thought like, this is a kinks ripoff, you know?
12:53 Speaker 03 Yeah. And then that Moon Man, the moon landing became as sort of tied to MTV as anything else. And is it because they thought, hey, we're also embarking on a journey not yet known? Sure. Is it because it was one small step for television and a giant leap for the music industry? Of course. Was it also because that stuff was public domain and rights free? Absolutely.
13:23 Josh Clark? 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.
13:43 Speaker 03 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 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.
14:21 Speaker 03 Apparently, after the Challenger disaster, that branding ended in 1986, but 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.
14:35 Josh Clark? I could see them taking it off the air temporarily because I definitely remember seeing it too. I would guess after 1986, but yeah. Yes, I could see the Challenger disaster happening and being like, yeah, let's just not do anything space-related right now.
14:50 Speaker 03 Yeah. What about the taglines? They had a couple of those early on too, right?
14:53 Josh Clark? The idents, you mean? Oh, the tagline. Sorry. Yeah, apparently it was, you'll never look at music the same way again.
15:00 Speaker 03 Pretty fun.
15:01 Josh Clark? On cable, in stereo.
15:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:05 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're okay. That and ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll, they just sound like they're delivered by somebody wearing rainbow suspenders, maybe.
15:14 Josh Clark? Just real like late 70s, early 80s kind of branding stuff?
15:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I could see that.
15:19 Josh Clark? But what about the idents, the identifying,
15:23 Josh Clark? I guess snippets? I'm not sure what the actual TV trade name is for them.
15:28 Speaker 03 I think I called them bumpers earlier. I'm not sure what the trade name is either, but I don't, I don't know what, where you're headed here. So take it away.
15:34 Josh Clark? Oh, well, it's like station branding, showing you what network you're, you're watching. And MTV became really famous for all sorts of weird and bizarre ways of showing like, are you 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 was just, the whole thing started on a shot of a guillotine blade falling. And then all of a sudden, in the basket or on the floor of the, the gallows or wherever, a head falls down and the head is in the shape of the M. 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.
16:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, we did, if anyone saw our, 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.
16:31 Josh Clark? Yeah.
16:32 Speaker 03 Who did a phenomenal job. They're just like, it's one of the coolest things about that show still, I think.
16:37 Josh Clark? Yeah. And also if you want to see some MTV idents, there's something on YouTube titled creepy MTV ident and logos collection 1990s. And it's, I think like 25 minutes of these 10 second clips.
16:53 Speaker 03 Amazing. I'll have to check that out.
16:54 Josh Clark? Yeah, you definitely should. Sorry I didn't send it to you.
16:57 Speaker 03 That's okay.
16:58 Josh Clark? No, it's not Chuck. I'm sorry.
17:01 Speaker 03 On August 1st, just after midnight, 1981 is when MTV formerly, formally 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 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 in what is now the most tired and obvious
17:45 Speaker 03 trivia question of all time, probably, the very first video to play, and I'm not making fun of you if you didn't know this, but it's just, it 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.
18:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, which is appropriate, video killed the radio star. Although it did, it did quite the opposite, though. It actually made the radio star into even bigger stars, as we'll see.
18:12 Speaker 03 Unless you weren't good at videos.
18:14 Josh Clark? No, or you didn't want to make a video. You're basically making a massive career choice right then, in the 80s and 90s, to just basically be like, no, I don't want to be that huge, so I'm not going to play MTV's game.
18:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think the question now at Bar Trivia should be, everybody knows that video Killed the Radio Star was the first music video played on MTV, what was the second?
18:37 Josh Clark? Oh, do you know? Because I don't, I don't have that list.
18:41 Speaker 03 It is, it was Pat Benatar, You Better Run. In that first 24 hours, there were 116 unique videos for 209 total plays. So yes, there were plenty of repeats. The Pretenders, Brass and Pocket, The Who, You Better You Bet was the first one to be repeated. Rod Stewart had, this is shocking, on the very first day of MTV, Rod Stewart had 11, not just videos playing, he had 11 different videos playing for 16 total plays.
19:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. That's amazing.
19:20 Speaker 03 And your boys, Iron Maiden, were in that first, uh, they were in the top 20, buddy. Uh, number 16 was the song, Iron Maiden.
19:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, and then later on, they played Wrath Child, too. So they had two videos in the first 24 hours.
19:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, so, I mean, if you kind of put all those together, what you, what you're seeing is a very, very varied,
19:40 Speaker 03 um, 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. Uh, but, you know, they, they had a, uh, to call when you don't have a lot of stuff in stock? Problem?
19:56 Josh Clark? Uh, uh, I don't know, a, a big problem?
19:58 Speaker 03 A supply problem.
19:59 Josh Clark? Oh, okay.
20:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:02 Josh Clark? So, yeah, it was so varied. I saw that they played the video for Andrew Gold's "Thank You For Being A Friend", which went on to become the Golden Girls theme. That was the 54th video played on MTV ever. And they only played it once.
20:15 Speaker 03 Uh, but who was playing this? VJs. Uh, they had to start out with an initial lineup of VJs. Um, Bob Pittman very much had, uh, I think it was kind of breakfast clubby. He wanted very specific archetypes of youngish people. Um, he said, "We need a black person", we need, uh, which was J.J. Jackson. 41 years old, by the way, so he was sort of the, the old, the old guy for the 10-year-old that was watching.
20:39 Josh Clark? Wow.
20:40 Speaker 03 Uh, "We need a girl next door", which was Martha Quinn, 22 years old. I think she was the youngest. "We need a sexy little siren", uh, clearly Nina Blackwood. Uh, "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.
20:56 Josh Clark? And I think Mark Goodman was the first VJ on.
21:00 Speaker 03 Oh, I thought it was Alan Hunter.
21:01 Josh Clark? I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman. I watched, like, uh, there are all sorts of videos of, you know, the first hour, the first two hours, the first whatever hours of MTV. And I watched the first, uh, little bit of it, and it, I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman who was first.
21:17 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
21:19 Josh Clark? Well, we'll, we'll find out eventually one day. I did see that I think VH1 rebroadcast the first 24 hours of MTV once, not too many years ago.
21:29 Speaker 03 Oh, well, that's fun.
21:30 Josh Clark? Yeah, it just says like a, hey, guys, we like you over here.
21:34 Speaker 03 And also, I'm a semi recent subscriber to Sirius XM.
21:39 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
21:40 Speaker 03 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, what do I want to listen to? I can't think of anything. What can I play? And it's great. And they got great channels. This is not an ad for them, but I, I really, really am enjoying it. And there are a few shows on a few stations from those, those VJs. I think Martha Quinn has a show.
22:09 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah, yeah.
22:10 Speaker 03 Alan Hunter has one, Mark Goodman, I think Nina Blackwood used to. I'm not sure if Martha Quinn still does, but yeah, it's, 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.
22:22 Josh Clark? I feel like they owe you at least a free month, or a hat, a baseball cap at least.
22:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, I hope a free year.
22:30 Josh Clark? 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 $1.50 area?
22:38 Speaker 03 Yeah. And that's the sort of the, the ticket. You just, you just wait for a good deal. First 12 months or like five bucks or something.
22:45 Josh Clark? And they said, well, there goes your free year, Chuck.
22:48 Speaker 03 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 MTV VJ.
22:57 Josh Clark? He was so cool, though.
22:58 Speaker 03 Oh, I love Bells. And then Carol Leifer was a comedian who later went on to write for Seinfeld.
23:03 Josh Clark? Yes, she did pretty well for herself.
23:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:06 Josh Clark? The thing is, is in retrospect today, you're like, yeah, MTV was 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, 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 it wasn't out of the gate like a sure bet that MTV was going to become a huge cable juggernaut.
23:30 Josh Clark? And to kind of help spread the word that there was such a thing as MTV, an ad agency called the LPG Pawn Agency very wisely came up with the I want my MTV campaign. And I remember seeing those 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.
23:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, 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 my favorite groups, Dire Straits, in 1985 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.
24:34 Josh Clark? Uncredited guests, I think, even.
24:37 Speaker 03 Well, meaning that they didn't pay them?
24:41 Josh Clark? No, that they didn't say, "And Sting, ladies and gentlemen."
24:44 Speaker 03 Well, like, in the song?
24:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's what I would have expected.
24:47 Speaker 03 Who does that? Like, before Dolly Parton's verse in "Islands in the Stream," Kenny Rogers just goes, "And now, Dolly Parton."
24:53 Josh Clark? I could totally see that. He would pull it off, too.
24:56 Speaker 03 He totally could have.
24:57 Josh Clark? So, 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 there 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.
25:28 Speaker 03 Right.
25:29 Josh Clark? Because if your parents didn't want you watching it, you definitely wanted to watch MTV.
25:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I mentioned that supply problem. I do have a number here, thanks to Livia. There were only 250 videos at first.
25:43 Speaker 03 So if you look at the math, they played 209 videos on the first day. So they sort of spent their allowance almost fully on that first day. So for a long time, you were seeing videos and repeated heavily in 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.
26:07 Josh Clark? I friend did a little bit of math.
26:10 Speaker 03 Oh, God, it's always my favorite part.
26:12 Josh Clark? At an average of three minutes per video, which I think is a good average, they would have to start over every 12 hours.
26:21 Speaker 03 Uh, oh, if they just didn't repeat ones and they just played their whole supply?
26:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, the whole wad.
26:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:29 Josh Clark? Um, one thing, though, there was this, uh, there's a documentary out on Devo that's really good on Netflix.
26:34 Speaker 03 Ah, I still haven't seen it.
26:36 Josh Clark? It's really good, um, I think. And they really kind of talk a lot about how Devo, so Devo in the early days, they were an art collective as much as a band. 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 Devo helped make MTV. They gave them more really good, like videos that people wanted to see.
27:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:02 Josh Clark? And then as MTV got bigger and bigger and more and more commercial, uh, Devo 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 was a, that was a big point that they made, and I think something overlooked that there were a lot of interesting pioneering groups.
27:22 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
27:22 Josh Clark? That were making videos even before MTV came along, that 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 take my shirt off and tease my hair out with, put a little Aquanet in there. I can make a video too. 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, okay, let's do it.
27:50 Speaker 03 And Kip Winger is like, yeah, but like, don't you understand my songs about 17 year old girls?
27:54 Josh Clark? Yeah. It really is. There's no getting around it. The only one that's worse or more blatant than that is, um, Benny Madrones. No, his is, um, Into the Night, where he's like trying to spring like a middle schooler or something like that from her parents' house.
28:13 Speaker 03 Oh, I don't remember that.
28:15 Josh Clark? If I could fly, I'd pick you up and take you into the night.
28:20 Speaker 03 Oh, I know that song. Yeah, yeah.
28:21 Josh Clark? Show you love. It's a great song, but.
28:24 Speaker 03 Super creepy.
28:24 Josh Clark? You just can't stop and think about what he's saying.
28:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, or, or watch the Lionel Richie video for Hello. Is it me you're looking for? It's kind of a sweet song, but in the video, he's like a, he's like a teacher that seems seemingly stalking a blind student.
28:41 Josh Clark? Right, and a sculptor, sculptor, right? An art teacher?
28:45 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, I think so. It was, it's one of those at the time where you're like, oh, that's sweet. Now you're like, oh, my God. Like, fire, fire that teacher.
28:52 Josh Clark? Right. There's a lot of eighties and nineties media that's like that.
28:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. Um, 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 Heads.
29:05 Josh Clark? Right.
29:06 Speaker 03 Or, like, do you remember the Art of Noise video?
29:09 Josh Clark? Hmm, oh, like the super cool, like, animation?
29:11 Speaker 03 It was like herky-jerky stop motion with, like, chainsawing mannequins and.
29:16 Josh Clark? What was the name of the song?
29:18 Speaker 03 I don't remember the name of the song, but Art of Noise was the band. Uh, but like, there's no way I would have known, like, I was listening to Top 40 radio and then in a couple of years, my brother-in-law would start feeding me Southern Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers and stuff like that. And, like, there's no way I would have been listening to any artsy stuff like that, because that didn't come along for me until I started listening to alternative music in, like, the ninth and 10th grade.
29:44 Josh Clark? You know, um, and I think a lot of people out there would be like, well, no, Chuck, you would have heard Devo on the radio, or you would have heard.
29:51 Speaker 03 I doubt it. Maybe Talking Heads.
29:53 Josh Clark? 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 they played them.
30:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:06 Josh Clark? You were going to start selling records in that cable operators region. That's just what happened. It became very clear, uh, very quantifiable 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 were going to sell in local record stores. And from that point on, MTV was basically, it had its, its path set out for them.
30:29 Speaker 03 Yeah. Man, Devo's so good. If your only experience with Devo is the Satisfaction, the Rolling Stones cover, or, or Whip It, both of which are great songs.
30:39 Josh Clark? Yeah.
30:39 Speaker 03 Like, do yourself a favor and just dive in. It's amazing music. I love Devo and shout out, of course, to Akron, Akron, Akron and Firestone High School.
30:51 Josh Clark? Chuck, we're 30 minutes in and we haven't taken an ad break yet.
30:55 Speaker 03 I thought we took one, no?
30:56 Josh Clark? I don't think so, did we? Let's ask Jerry to rule on this. Jerry?
31:01 Speaker 04 You have not.
31:03 Speaker 03 Okay. 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 supersized. So maybe 30 minutes is about right.
31:13 Josh Clark? Okay. So we're going to cut to commercial break right now. Will you play us out with the music stinger?
31:22 Josh Clark? No?
31:23 Speaker 03 Oh, me? I thought you meant Jerry.
31:25 Josh Clark? You.
31:26 Speaker 03 Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
31:33 Josh Clark? Very nice.
31:52 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability and it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.
32:02 Speaker 03 That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road ready Tacoma or half ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure and the rugged style for everything in between.
32:15 Josh Clark? Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic forerunner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.
32:30 Speaker 03 That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.
32:55 Speaker 05 Every small business owner has that one story, the one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Kathleen Griffith, co-host of The Unshakeables, along with Stevie Barron, CEO of Chase for Business. We have more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible still to come in season three. You'll hear from entrepreneurs who faced make or break moments and came out stronger. We dig into how they did it, what they learned, what they'd never do again, and what kept them pushing forward. These are the stories that remind us that being unshakable isn't about never falling. It's about how you rise, rebuild, and keep going. Whether you're starting up, scaling up, or trying to find your footing again,
33:40 Speaker 05 these stories remind us that resilience lives everywhere, in small businesses shaping communities all across America. Listen to The Unshakeables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com/podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase and Company.
34:18 Josh Clark? Okay, Chuck, 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 loved Thriller so much that my family bought the making of the 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 onto MTV, which is mind-boggling to me these days.
35:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. This was 1982 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 13-minute mini-movie that accompanied Thriller as the video.
35:21 Speaker 03 And Vincent Price had an option, apparently, to either take a flat fee of like, I don't even know how much it was, 20 grand or something.
35:30 Josh Clark? That's what I was gonna say.
35:31 Speaker 03 Or get, yeah, that sounds about right. Or get points on the Thriller album. And he clearly opted for the, for the flat fee.
35:42 Josh Clark? Oh, wow.
35:42 Speaker 03 And would go on to regret that for many years. And apparently, over 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 gonna say it here, but you can go look it up if you want.
36:07 Josh Clark? Okay. One other thing about that album, too, that was interesting, Billie Jean was on there. I know Beat It was on there, they both were. But Eddie Van Halen played guitar on Beat It, that very famous guitar solo.
36:20 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
36:21 Josh Clark? And apparently, at the time, Van Halen had like, no outside work deal with one another.
36:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:28 Josh Clark? All they could do is focus on Van Halen. And so Eddie Van Halen had the opportunities, like, yeah, I don't think anybody will hear this record. I'm just gonna play on this dude's record and no one will know about it, because it'll be uncredited. And sure enough, it turns out that Beat It and Thriller became one of the biggest selling albums of all time.
36:48 Speaker 03 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.
36:55 Josh Clark? No.
36:56 Speaker 03 I mean, Off the Wall was out, of course, and he was with the Jackson Five, but no one knew it was gonna be, you know, one of the best-selling, if not the best-selling albums of all time.
37:04 Josh Clark? Man, poor Vincent Price, I didn't know that.
37:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, and also, in regards to Thriller, it was a $900,000 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, 100,000 copies of that in advance. For $29.95, Showtime paid $300,000 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 rights, so.
37:37 Josh Clark? That's just the documentary?
37:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, because the videos were free.
37:42 Josh Clark? Yeah, for the making of Thriller, the documentary, and it was good, it was like an hour and 10 minutes long, I looked it up.
37:47 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, I watched it.
37:48 Josh Clark? 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.
38:02 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
38:03 Josh Clark? In an interview on MTV with Mark Goodman. And he basically just said, like, what's, what's the deal here? I think his, his actually quote is, what the holy heck is going on with you guys? And it was, it was true. I mean, like, you just couldn't put it any other way. And MTV basically said, well, we play rock, and it's actually rock's fault because they're the ones who exclude black 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, if 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 Michael Jackson's
38:47 Josh Clark? Thriller album, we're pulling all of CBS Records artists. You're not going to get a single video from any of them. And that was significant because they made up about a quarter of the videos that were playing on MTV at the time.
39:00 Speaker 03 Yeah. And part two of that, and this is for real, he, he said, we will publicly accuse you of racism if you don't start playing these.
39:08 Josh Clark? Yeah.
39:08 Speaker 03 So I think that really hit home, obviously. They got Billie Jean and Beat It in the rotation fairly heavily at first, but Libya said she found that that didn't last too long. I feel like I remember seeing those ad nauseam forever.
39:23 Josh Clark? Oh, really? I, I remember not seeing them as often as I wanted.
39:26 Speaker 03 Oh, well, you also had a secret white glove on, so. You might've wanted to hear more than me, I don't know.
39:33 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's true.
39:34 Speaker 03 I love those songs, though. And I remember working a, a, a commercial job one time with my longtime production manager, Andrea, and she, it very casually dropped that she was a production coordinator on the Beat It video one time. And I was like, excuse me? One of the fun things about doing that stuff in LA is you would 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.
40:01 Josh Clark? That's cool.
40:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:04 Josh Clark? So by this time, we're talking mid 80s and MTV is now the place that is making the names of the artists who are making videos for their music, right?
40:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:16 Josh Clark? And the more daring you were, or the more Kip Winger-esque you were, you could make a really big name for yourself. It didn't matter all that much whether your 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, it's no overstatement to say that Madonna's career was made. Who else, Chuck?
40:50 Speaker 03 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 Bin, like groundbreaking videos like Pressure. And then when he married, or was dating at least, Christie Brinkley.
41:09 Josh Clark? Oh yeah, I remember that video.
41:10 Speaker 03 And like the video for Uptown Girl. And all of a sudden, the biggest supermodel on planet earth was on MTV. It was a big deal. They started the, the top 20 video countdown in 1984. So all of a sudden, that is rivaling American top 40 on radio as far as like where the kids are going to see the, the top content. The VMAs, the Video Music Awards started also in 1984 and had plenty of iconic moments. And very quickly, like music video directors, it became sort of a, a farm league for people that would go on to be huge, huge movie directors started out in music videos.
41:50 Josh Clark? Or it went the other way too. I saw that William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist in 1983, also directed Laura Branigan's video for Self Control in 1983.
42:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:02 Josh Clark? You know the one where she, she lives among the creatures of the night?
42:06 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
42:07 Josh Clark? She doesn't have the will to try and fight?
42:09 Speaker 03 I remember that. I love Laura Brandon again.
42:11 Josh Clark? That's a great song. Beats the heck out of Gloria, if you ask me.
42:15 Speaker 03 I like Gloria.
42:16 Josh Clark? 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.
42:24 Speaker 03 That's true, but far more often, to be fair. It went the other way and people started out in music videos and went on to be very popular film directors. David Fincher directed Vogue from Madonna, The End of Innocence from Don Henley. Janie's Got a Gun from Aerosmith, not the Aerosmith videos that featured Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone that were also iconic. He also directed the George Michael Freedom 90 video, which talk about supermodels, like every supermodel under the sun was in that one.
42:56 Josh Clark? I was reading about George Michael's 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.com and looked for some contemporary anious articles on that.
43:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:13 Josh Clark? And dude, the stuff that they were saying, like, should videos, should sexy videos be banned? 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 80s? And it absolutely was. And if you go back and look at the video, it is objectively sexy. But to ban anything because of this video, it's just mind bogglingly stupid today in 2025.
43:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Another group of directors, Michelle Gondry and Spike Jonze got their starts. If you want to talk about just sort of groundbreaking videos, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer in 1986.
43:59 Josh Clark? Yes.
44:00 Speaker 03 Was directed by Stephen R. Johnson, the amazing stop motion animation with the help of the brothers Quay and Aardman Animations. That was a big one. And then of course, the Aha Take On Me video was a huge, huge breakthrough video.
44:12 Josh Clark? Man, such a great song still.
44:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:15 Josh Clark? 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.
44:21 Speaker 03 I love the song.
44:22 Josh Clark? 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 could be.
44:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're all, they're all hot dudes.
44:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, I remember my sister with her hands clasped under her chin, just like staring at the TV whenever that guy came on.
44:42 Speaker 03 We should, we should mention just for Libby too, because Libby wrote this and she clearly has a soft spot in her heart for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video.
44:49 Josh Clark? 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. Like when you went and watched the Top 20 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.
45:28 Josh Clark? For Legs, Sharp Dress Man, Give Me All Your Lovin'. And it featured like that super cool, like 1930s car or whatever with the ZZ Top keychain.
45:40 Speaker 03 I had one of those.
45:40 Josh Clark? Their guitar and their bass would spin on the axis. They could just twirl them. You remember that? And they were fuzzy. They were, they were just really cool videos. And I remember just being like, wow, 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 were like sexually harassing the three women in the Eliminator Series. And that they would always get their comeuppance. And ZZ Top was always cheering for these three, I guess, muses or angels or whoever who would come out of the blue and save the day.
46:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, angels in fishnet hopes.
46:23 Josh Clark? Exactly.
46:25 Speaker 03 I don't know if there was ever a group that was less. Likely to be MTV stars than ZZ Top was.
46:34 Josh Clark? They were saying that there was a quote where they were like, you know, we had basically had our run.
46:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:39 Josh Clark? As in rock, not even rock and roll.
46:41 Speaker 03 Texas Blues Band.
46:42 Josh Clark? Exactly. I think this is in like Texas Monthly, maybe magazine, because they, 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 quoted, who said like, we got 16 year old girls back as fans.
47:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:00 Josh Clark? You know, like, so yeah, that's a really great point. They were extremely unlikely. And 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.
47:11 Speaker 03 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.
47:23 Josh Clark? They were great. He apparently had 10 specials on MTV over the years called Al TV. But yeah, that was another one too. Like you'd be like, have you seen Weird Al's Like a Surgeon video? Or I Lost on Jeopardy?
47:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:38 Josh Clark? And stuff. And then one other one too, that was a really big video early on was the video for Fish Heads from Barnes and Barn. Do you remember that?
47:48 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, I don't remember that being a very big song or video at all. I, I thought it was just noteworthy because it was Bill Paxton. Or was that a big song?
47:57 Josh Clark? I think it was one of those ones that made people go watch MTV because it would come on sometimes.
48:04 Speaker 03 Okay.
48:04 Josh Clark? 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.
48:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, kind of like MC Scat Cat.
48:14 Josh Clark? That's right.
48:15 Speaker 03 Baller Abdul.
48:16 Josh Clark? Yep. I remember that.
48:20 Josh Clark? Wait, wait, we're getting nostalgic. We failed.
48:22 Speaker 03 I know, I know. That, 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.
48:43 Speaker 03 And, and it was like, it's not like they weren't a big band before, but Hungry Like the Wolf really put them over the top.
48:51 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. And just changed the, the way that people made videos too. They made them much more, like it was a movie.
48:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, a pretty good one, I thought.
49:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, and a good song, too.
49:03 Speaker 03 Should we take our second break here at minute forty-seven?
49:06 Josh Clark? Yeah.
49:07 Speaker 03 All right, we'll be right back because there's plenty more to talk about with MTV.
49:28 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability, and it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.
49:38 Speaker 03 That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.
49:51 Josh Clark? Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.
50:06 Speaker 03 That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.
50:31 Speaker 05 Every small business owner has that one story, the one moment that could have broken them, but remarkably, it didn't. Hi, I'm Kathleen Griffith, co-host of The Unshakeables, along with Stevie Barron, CEO of Chase for Business. We have more incredible stories of overcoming the impossible still to come in season three. You'll hear from entrepreneurs who faced make or break moments and came out stronger. We dig into how they did it, what they learned, what they'd never do again, and what kept them pushing forward. These are the stories that remind us that being unshakable isn't about never falling. It's about how you rise, rebuild, and keep going. Whether you're starting up, scaling up, or trying to find your footing again,
51:16 Speaker 05 these stories remind us that resilience lives everywhere, in small businesses, shaping communities all across America. Listen to The Unshakables wherever you get your podcasts and learn more at chase.com/podcast. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase & Company.
51:49 Speaker 03 So MTV was a pretty big success in the mid 80s, 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 for about a million bucks.
52:12 Josh Clark? Yeah.
52:13 Speaker 03 But in 1985, 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 120 Minutes and Headbanger's Ball and Yo MTV Raps and stuff like that.
52:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, yes. And 120 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 120 minutes till 2:00 a.m. It's like the worst time slot in the history of time slots. And yet, that was the only place you could see like a Susie and the Banshees 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.
53:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, the great Matt Penfield, shout out to him as host of Club MTV in 1987. With Downtown Julie Brown, that was their their dance show, their their sort of Soul Train, American Bandstand style show. I'd say just go listen to the heavy metal episodes if you want to hear more about Headbanger's Ball.
53:26 Josh Clark? Sure.
53:27 Speaker 03 But Yo MTV Raps started in 1988, and that was like Run DMC had been on, I think in 84 with Rock Box, but Yo MTV Raps cannot be under or overestimated, I guess, as was what a role it played in bringing hip hop and rap to the mainstream.
53:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, and if you want a new trivia question to replace the Buggles video Killed the Radio Star, the first rap video played on Yo MTV Raps was Shinehead's Chain Gang.
53:56 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
53:57 Josh Clark? You remember that one?
53:58 Speaker 03 I don't, not at all, actually. Do you?
54:01 Josh Clark? You know, The Sound of the Men working on the Chain Gang?
54:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:04 Josh Clark? He did like a hip hop version of that.
54:06 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
54:07 Josh Clark? It's good. Go listen to it.
54:09 Speaker 03 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 NWA had some of their stuff banned, Public Enemy, the great song, By the Time I Get to Arizona, was banned in 1991. And then also, one of my favorite shows was Unplugged.
54:29 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
54:29 Speaker 03 Started in 1989, 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 like that.
54:52 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. I was like, I never really ever watched MTV Unplugged. I wasn't very aware of it. Now that you said that Nirvana song, yes, I remember now.
55:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, R E M'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?
55:13 Josh Clark? For sure. Or Depeche Mode.
55:18 Josh Clark? So one other thing that was huge, just huge, that started out as just some small thing that they tried was in 1986, Alan Hunter took everybody to Daytona Beach.
55:28 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
55:28 Josh Clark? And they basically just covered Spring Break.
55:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:31 Josh Clark? And Spring Break became an annual event on MTV for decades to come. It was 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.
55:56 Speaker 03 Right.
55:56 Josh Clark? Because it didn't look like that outside in April in 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 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.
56:15 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah.
56:17 Josh Clark? It just made summer, summer. You know what I'm saying?
56:20 Speaker 03 Sort of like the official kickoff. Yeah.
56:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. Or like even like in the middle of summer, just seeing that in the morning, you know, as you're getting ready to go hang out with friends because school was out. It just, it was like a punctuation mark for summer. It just made it more of a summer to me.
56:36 Speaker 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 too, with the typewriter spelling out MTV News and that, that sound that it made. Yeah. Do that louder. You just did it great.
56:56 Speaker 03 No, your first try was better.
57:00 Speaker 03 Kurt Loder though, was a veteran rock journalist and he was, is sort of the, the main face in 1987. But you know, they also had like Chris Connolly, he 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 and Serena Altshul. And even a little bit of Kennedy.
57:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, Kennedy. Remember Duffy?
57:26 Speaker 03 Oh, I remember Duffy. She lived in a friend of mine's building in, uh, in New York, in the Greenwich Village in the, in the mid 90s. And I saw her in the elevator once and almost passed out.
57:34 Josh Clark? I'll bet. Uh, I think the, the one who could top them all, though, was Daisy Fuentes.
57:40 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. I forgot about her. Daisy Fuentes.
57:42 Josh Clark? Daisy Fuentes. Um, so anyway, moving on, there was a, uh, a game show on MTV for, I think, just like a year, maybe, called, um, Remote Control. Came on in 1987. And if anyone asks you what, um, MTV's first regular non-music programming was, it was Remote Control. And I loved Remote Control.
58:05 Speaker 03 Me too. It had to be more than a year because Ken Ober was the host, unless they just replaced the host mid-year, which I, I don't remember. Uh, because another crush, Kari Wer took over for Ken Ober at a certain point. Uh, but Remote Control was very funny and, uh, a great game show for people our age. And to me, it was most noteworthy is launching the careers of Colin Quinn.
58:28 Josh Clark? Yes.
58:29 Speaker 03 Uh, who was the sidekick and a, a young Adam Sandler and Dennis Leary got their start there.
58:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, they were both writers. And then Adam Sandler also played some early characters, one of which was Stud Boy.
58:42 Josh Clark? But it was great. It had one of the all-time best sets of not just any game show, but any TV show. It was set in Ken Ober's parents' basement and it was all about, all of the questions were about TV and TV history and stuff. It was really wonderful. Like the people, the players played from recliners. And if I remember correctly, if you were, if you lost, you're like, the recliner went sailing backwards through the wall.
59:04 Speaker 03 I think so.
59:05 Josh Clark? That was a great show.
59:07 Speaker 03 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, "I wasn't like the other kids," or something like that, right?
59:17 Josh Clark? It was, Kenny wasn't like the other kids.
59:20 Speaker 03 Oh, that's it.
59:20 Josh Clark? "TV mattered. Nothing, nothing else did."
59:22 Speaker 03 "Nothing else did."
59:23 Josh Clark? "Girls said yes, but he said no. Now he's got his own game show."
59:27 Speaker 03 Do you remember that or did you look that up?
59:29 Josh Clark? I remembered it. I did not look up a word of that.
59:32 Speaker 03 That's so funny, man. I, I, I knew there was something there about not being like the other kids.
59:35 Josh Clark? No, because, yeah, he just wanted to watch TV. So now he has a game show about TV.
59:41 Speaker 03 Uh, House of Style, 1989, a fashion show hosted by Cindy Crawford, was huge. Uh, as far as comedy goes, it turns out, beyond Remote Control being very funny.
59:52 Speaker 03 Uh, they launched like, they were, they were sneakily one of the great comedy incubators of the eighties, I feel like.
59:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, and nineties.
59:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, into the nineties, cause The State, uh, the great, uh, to me, the best sketch show of all time was The State.
1:00:05 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
1:00:06 Speaker 03 From ninety-four to ninety-five on MTV. Uh, The Ben Stiller Show in nineteen ninety was, uh, amazing and very underseen and underrated.
1:00:15 Josh Clark? Did you watch that when it was on?
1:00:16 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:00:18 Josh Clark? I did not.
1:00:19 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, I was into all of that.
1:00:21 Josh Clark? I went, so that launched Janine Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Judd Apatow, Andy Dick, for better or worse, Ben Stiller, obviously, cause before that, he was just Jerry Stiller's kid.
1:00:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:34 Josh Clark? 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 and David Cross.
1:00:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:45 Josh Clark? With Dinos Dematopoulos, who was also a writer on the show with them, and, um, they went on to make, uh, Mr. Show.
1:00:52 Speaker 03 Now, that actually might be my favorite sketch show.
1:00:54 Josh Clark? I, 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.
1:01:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
1:01:04 Josh Clark? 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 Odenkirk does a perfect Charles Manson.
1:01:17 Speaker 03 It's so good. Uh, and that's where Ben Stiller started doing the Tom Cruise impressions and, um, yeah, such a good show. Uh, we, we, even though I wasn't into it, we have to talk about Totally Polly.
1:01:30 Josh Clark? Sure.
1:01:30 Speaker 03 Uh, Polly's show ran for five years, so it was actually a pretty big hit.
1:01:34 Josh Clark? The Wees.
1:01:35 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, The Wees. Uh, and then, one of my favorites, which got, you know, MTV had such good programming for a while there with these other shows. Um, Liquid Television in nineteen ninety-one. 10 years at least before Adult Swim came on, you could be a kid that was watching this crazy weird experimental animation on television.
1:01:54 Josh Clark? Yeah, Liquid Television, right? Did you watch Aon Flux?
1:01:58 Speaker 03 I loved Aon Flux. It was mind blowing.
1:02:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, if you've never seen Aon Flux, 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. 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 Butthead got its start, therefore where Mike Judge got his start. Aon Flux 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 acid a little bit,
1:02:44 Josh Clark? and watch TV, are willing to stay up late to watch cartoons. This showed that they were out there.
1:02:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, I didn't know until today that the animated show Daria was a spin off of Beavis and Butthead, that Daria was a character briefly on that show until you pointed that out.
1:03:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, she was one of their classmates at high school.
1:03:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, so Daria was big. We can't, you know, we're running so long, we can't like dive into all of these. But we have to at least mention shows like Jackass and Cribs.
1:03:13 Josh Clark? Yeah.
1:03:14 Speaker 03 And then, and then the birth of reality TV eventually was stuff like The Osbournes and Jersey Shore and Punk'd. But it all got started in 1992 with The Real World, which, I mean, clearly, I mean, you know, there was the 70s PBS show An American Family. But as far as the teenagers watching stuff, reality TV, I feel like was birthed with The Real World.
1:03:38 Josh Clark? Yeah. And you can make a case, my hypothesis is that you can trace pretty much every problem that we have with the world today back to reality TV and ergo back to The Real World.
1:03:54 Speaker 03 That show was really good for a while. I will stand, 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 had a more pure intent before that as a kind of a weird social experiment.
1:04:19 Josh Clark? Yeah, no, it wasn't the show itself that was problematic. It was the, the foundation that it created, the legacy it created.
1:04:26 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:04:27 Josh Clark? Because like, 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 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.
1:04:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. I don't want people to get mad if we don't mention Carson Daly 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 Daly 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 some great things these days.
1:05:22 Josh Clark? Was he on Total Request Live?
1:05:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't know if he took over for Carson Daly or sort of pinch hit or sometimes, but I know he was definitely one of the hosts.
1:05:33 Josh Clark? 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.
1:05:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:50 Josh Clark? It like, 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 winger video. And then all of a sudden comes, I don't know, some terrible video. I'm not going to call it anybody's favorite artist. 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.
1:06:32 Josh Clark? And if those shows 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, 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.
1:06:51 Speaker 03 That's right. MTV two launched in 1996. It was like, hey, it's just gonna be music videos. We pinky swear.
1:06:59 Josh Clark? Trust us.
1:07:00 Speaker 03 Less than 10 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.
1:07:14 Josh Clark? Like Gargantua Style?
1:07:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. And, uh, 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.
1:07:28 Josh Clark? Hmm, okay.
1:07:29 Speaker 03 For nostalgia, it's kind of nice.
1:07:31 Josh Clark? If you, if you go on MTV, it's still around. I believe MTV two is still around too. There is a 98.75% chance that you will find an episode of ridiculousness playing.
1:07:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:45 Josh Clark? It's been, it carries MTV almost single-handedly. It's a, it's a show where they just basically put together hilarious clips. It's like, um, It's like America's Funniest Home Videos for nihilists and skateboarders, basically, right?
1:08:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:08:02 Josh Clark? And it's a good little show. You remember our friend Hampton Yount? Who was in one of our variety shows in LA?
1:08:08 Speaker 03 That's the only reason I know about Ridiculousness.
1:08:11 Josh Clark? Yep. He was one of the writers on Ridiculousness. It's a cute little show, but it has propped up MTV so much that it's been on for 14 years since 2011, yet somehow it is in season 45.
1:08:26 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:08:27 Josh Clark? That's how many episodes they crank out to keep MTV going. So hats off to Rob Drydek.
1:08:33 Speaker 03 It's the House Hunters of MTV.
1:08:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, essentially, for sure.
1:08:37 Speaker 03 Uh, 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 seemed to kind of want to one up the last as far as what they would do.
1:08:51 Josh Clark? Yeah.
1:08:52 Speaker 03 Uh, and they were, I mean, it was like, you know, you can win Bon Jovi's childhood home.
1:08:58 Speaker 03 You can win a pink house from John Mellencamp or John Cougar at the time in his small town or whatever. But they were, they were crazy. Um, there was one very famous story of the Van, like, party with Van Halen for two days. And this was in 1984 and this, this, I was about to say, poor guy, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to him. This guy named Kurt Jeffries has a legendary story of, uh, basically, like, they took it seriously. They weren't like, hey, let's just kind of get this kid in here and whatever, sign something. Like, they partied with him. 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.
1:09:41 Speaker 03 Like, apparently he woke up on day two and was like, I can't, uh, I've got to go home. And Alex Van Halen was like shoving a beer in his face and was like, you've got to do this, dude.
1:09:50 Josh Clark? He said, you can't leave the spot until you drink that beer. And it was, it was a tall boy.
1:09:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:09:56 Josh Clark? Uh, yeah, I was gonna say, after you rattle all that off, that that was just day one.
1:10:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was day one. There was a day two.
1:10:03 Josh Clark? And this was, this was a sponsored contest by MTV.
1:10:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, you, there's no way you could do that stuff 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 I just remember seeing like, bad homemade video after bad homemade video of True Blue over and over and over again, just so I could vote via phone.
1:10:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, the contest, 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.
1:10:48 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's definitely worth reading. Thanks for sending that to me. Ooh, Chuck, you got anything else?
1:10:55 Speaker 03 No, I mean, we missed a ton. So it's just kind of one of those episodes. We tried to stuff as much as we could in here.
1:11:00 Josh Clark? Yep. And keep an ear out for VH1, which should be following this one right after, right?
1:11:06 Speaker 03 Yeah. I say we skip listener mail even, it's been so long. And just say, go with God, go watch some music videos.
1:11:12 Josh Clark? Yeah, everybody's tired. Take the day off, everybody.
1:11:16 Speaker 03 Exactly.
1:11:16 Josh Clark? If you want to send us an email, you can. Send it off to [email protected] .
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