TFTP Flow: MTV (Music Television) from Nov. 1983

Posted to YouTube by user 'phxlefty'

A few weeks ago, TFTP featured its first post of a clip from a cable TV network (some promos from Showtime); here we have another clip of early cable TV--the legendary early MTV. MTV Music Television was one of the proto-cable networks that helped establish cable television as a medium after it launched in August of 1981. Early MTV, of course, featured mainly music videos, with a number of different kinds of segments as interstitials between the videos.

This extended (25 minute) clip is of those interstitial elements (the music videos themselves have been excised). Included in the clip are: VJ (video jockey) segments with original MTV VJ Mark Goodman; promotion of concert dates by The Police and Black Sabbath (and a taped intro to a Police concert by VJ Martha Quinn); classic MTV network IDs with the shifting-colors MTV logo and the iconic spaceman; promotion of the network's "Friday Night Music Fights", in which two music videos were pitted against one another; a spot for one of the network's famous giveaway promotions (here for Neil Young's pink Cadillac); and a "World Premiere" video announcement for Bob Dylan's latest music video.

The clip includes several commercials as well, and there is no mistaking the channel's adolescent target demographic based on the commercials featured here: compilation record albums, the Atari video game system, Panasonic boom boxes, and Compound W wart remover (!).