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The Early Days of Music Videos
Posted: Dec 16, 2007 in TV and Celebrities
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Since MTV seems to no longer play videos and VH1 is more likely these days to show reality celebrity programming made me think of the early days of videos...before MTV in 1981.
What outlets were there to show music videos before MTV???
HBO back when they had a schedule of 6pm-12am at weeknights and a longer schedule on weekends...showed music videos between movies and on programming blocks. HBO was actually on 24/7, but they showed scenes of movies with schedules on a rotating basis all day till it was time to air programming.
USA Network (known back then as MSG Network) showed a weekend music video program called Night Flight that featured videos often with a theme or two mixed in. MSG's programming was also live WWE events at MSG and live hockey.
Sometimes there were videos on The Midnight Special or Don Kirschner's Rock Concert; they both ran in the '70s till the early '80s. I remember seeing a cheesy Elton John and Kiki Dee video of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" from like 1976. And I remember a cool (at the time, at least) video from 1979 called "Pop Muzik" by M. "New York, London, Paris, Munich. Everybody's talking 'bout Pop Muzik." I must've seen them on one of the above shows.
Thanks for the info. I forgot about the Midnight Special and Don Kirschner's Rock Special. I remember watching when I was 11 years old the Midnight Special with the Spinners singing "Games People Play". It was right before I was to go to Honolulu and I was on one of those tours. Also, there was a little known (aka watched) show called Saturday Night with Howard Cosell (yes....the Howard Cosell from Monday Night Football). Little video footage is from that show. The only footage I know of is Barry Manilow singing 'I Write The Songs'.