“Ladies and gentleman…rock n roll”
Says announcer John Lack after the space shuttle Columbia takes off and so begins MTV.
You can catch that and more on this awesome new YouTube channel, MTV The First 24. It features 10 minute sections of that first day, all 24-hours, that will autoplay if you leave it on.
Or, you can quickly browse through the sections looking for nuggets of gold. Each section typically has a video at the beginning and end, with commercials and the VJ’s in the middle.
I’ve been watching it for hours (as I work) and it’s super awesome. The music videos are classic, the VJ’s are weird, and the news bytes are no Kurt Loder.
You can definitely tell how beta the launch was. There are lots of dead space moments where they were switching out VHS tapes (lol), but it has that “we’re doing something new here, we think it could be amazing, but we really have no idea what we’re doing.”
The videos really do make the show, with cult classics worth watching for their quality, 80s fashion, and pre-punk attitudes. Although, I could do without the Rod Stewart ‘butt’ moments.
Notable first videos: The Buggles – Video Killed the Radio Star // Pat Benatar – You Better Run // The Who – You Better You Bet // The Pretenders – Brass in Pocket.
The commercials are so old that that every product is funny or classic, worth it for that alone.
Here is the second video because the first contains 10 minutes of the space launch. This one has 4 more minutes of the launch, so skip to 4:16 if you want the real deal Holyfield.