Written by Doug – the northlondonhippy

It’s difficult to understate the huge cultural impact, and significance of MTV when it launched back in August of 1981. 

The effects were seismic. MTV changed the way we watched television, the way we listened to music, the way we discovered new bands, new styles, and new fashions.  New everything!

Adding mandatory visuals to everything musical, altered the media landscape in so many ways. It redefined what was cool for the 1980s. 

The very first video MTV played was a song by the Buggles, called “Video Killed the Radio Star”, but that wasn’t really accurate. Video made radio stars into TV stars too. 

I was lucky enough to score an internship with MTV in 1986, when MTV was at its very peak of the decade. 

The previous year, MTV had staged their largest, most ambitious live event yet, Live Aid. They were already riding high when I started hanging out with them. 

In this four part series, I’m going to take you back to a fairly amazing period of my young adult life, where I was loosely associated with MTV as an intern, and occasionally employed by them as a freelance production assistant. 

It’s also a tale of unrealised potential, and squandered opportunity, but it’s taken the gift of time, and distance for me to see that.

MTV Redux

Part One – What? And Give Up Showbiz?

Part Two – Name Dropping

Part Three – Crappy New Year!

Part Four – The Death of the Dream

(All words © Copyright 2023 – Doug – the northlondonhippy. All rights reserved)