MTV at 30: My Favorites

Ok, it's time to feel old.  MTV turns 30 on Monday.

The MTV of today bears no resemblance to the MTV that hit the cable airways back in 1981, back then it was all about music videos.  That's what I hear anyway, as I don't watch it anymore.

MTV did branch out into different kinds of programming as it aged.  He is my best of MTV over the years, or at least when I watched it.

The VJ's

It's a list that reads like a who's who of music.  Martha Quinn, Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, Downtown Julie Brown, Adam Curry, Dan Cortese, Daisy Fuentes, and Ed Lover were just a few of the names that brought us the music and the music news of the day.

Remote Control

MTV's first gameshow.  The late Ken Ober was a wannabe gameshow host who asked trivia questions to contestants in a studio that was supposed to resemble his basement.  It was low-budget, but it was addictive.  Colin Quinn served as his sidekick and Adam Sandler and Dennis Leary got their starts here as friends of Ober.

MTV Spring Break

Each year, MTV went all out to cover Spring Break.  They would take their VJ's and hosts to a different exotic locale and party with college kids from all over the country.They would film all the action and air it for an entire weekend, making all us college kids who lived in cold weather climates and couldn't go on Spring Break jealous.

Pauly Shore, Totally Pauly

Some people may want to forget this, but Pauly Shore was an MTV VJ and host for six years.  During that time he hosted a show call Totally Pauly.  He also brought his Weizel persona into our homes.  His stint on MTV helped launch his film career for which we are all so grateful.

Madonna - True Blue Video Contest

Madonna should send MTV a fruit basket or something for its 30th birthday.  Madonna owes much of her success to the cable outlet.  Back in 1986, MTV held a contest for the debut of Madonna's new single, True Blue.  Viewers could submit their own video to the song and could win $25,000.  For days, MTV played all the viewers videos back to back to back.  Good and bad, these videos ran and a winner was eventually chosen.  It was not one of Madonna's better songs and I still can't get it out of my head.

Jon Stewart

Back in the early 90's, Jon Stewart had a little talkshow on MTV.  It was good and he built on it to have the success he has today.

The Real World

If you hate all the reality show madness we have today, you can blame it on MTV and The Real World.  This series debuted on MTV all the way back in 1992.  I only watched the first three seasons, but I think they've had 20 or so seasons of it now.  Picking random people to live in a house together in a strange city was groundbreaking at the time, and there was always a lot of drama.  Characters like Puck and Jon the country singer are impossible to forget.