Mtv's first full 2 hours

[Daehawk]

Ive posted one of these before but as I recall it was shorter and it kinda clipped the end of the videos and didn't play any of the DJ talks in between or commercials or interviews. This has all of that for 2 hours.

12:01am Saturday August 1, 1981



Theres a time stamp of it all down in the comments a few posts in. Or you can find a listing online.

[Blackhawk]

Interesting. There was a time when nobody would have believed that MTV would stop being relevant, would stop playing videos, and that the "M" would no longer stand for 'Music.'

Anything after Riki Rachtman was just a death gurgle.

[Kraken]

I remember playing MTV with the sound off just for video wallpaper. The songs were hit-or-miss but the visuals were always interesting. Sometimes hallucinogens were involved.

[Jaymann]

There was some quality music back then, also some worthless schlock. Obviously most of those videos were made before this debut. I wonder how they were disseminated before MTV.

[Daehawk]

I always liked how each video was like a small movie or piece of art all on it's own. I got to seeing them as that and the videos became more interesting.

[Isgrimnur]

Music Video History: Music Videos in the pre-MTV era

The first true music videos as we know them as a format were from the 50s. One possible contender for first music video is Tony Bennett who made a music video in 1956 for “Stranger in Paradise”. He was filmed walking around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The music video was sent to TV stations in the UK and US to be played on shows like American Bandstand.
...
Another contender is from Czechoslovakia, made in 1958 for a song called “Dáme si do bytu”. It’s safe to say this is a music video and the only differences between this and something made in the 80s: style of music, clothes, simplicity of video editing, and video quality. We’ve come a long way technology wise, but still, this is a music video.