I thought MTV was an automatic growing up….

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brinkbam@reddit

Oh wow I rotated through the channels that had music videos. MTV, VH1, BET.... hell I'd even checkout CMT if there was nothing on the others.

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I grew up in a place where most people didnt have access to basic cable. For those that did have access to cable, the local basic cable didn’t have MTV. It was the mid 90’s before I caught my first glimpse of MTV. Lucky for me it was Spring Break! I went a full year without seeing it again when we moved and we finally got cable with MTV. But my family back home didn’t get MTV until the 2000’s.

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Persis-@reddit

We were too poor for cable until I was in my late teens.

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ShimmyxSham@reddit

Maybe she just wasn’t interested?

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NorthAmericanSlacker@reddit

My parents refused to pay for cable. I only ever saw MTV when we visited my grandparents four hours away where my cousin lived.

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Significant_Meal_630@reddit

This! Or if I was babysitting for someone that had it

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reddit_fake_account@reddit

Same. I didn't have cable TV until I was on my own. The first time I saw MTV was at a relatives house in my teens.

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Blametheorangejuice@reddit

My parents woke me up early one morning to show me that we had gone from 5 channels to almost 60. VH1 was the order of the day. First thing I saw on our new package was Jon Secada.

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JustHCBMThings@reddit

We had basic cable with VH2 - only music video I remember is Chris Isaac Wicked Game.

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ChilledPoet@reddit

And thus began the dark spiral into blurry Skinamax for a young @JustHCBMThings 😏

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Afraid_Locksmith8642@reddit

Trying to catch a boob through the scrambled screen was a sport in itself

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Longjumping-Air1489@reddit

Ummmm, a lot of people lost blood pressure with that video so it’s no real surprise that’s the only one you remember.

Some guys I hung with referenced their heads collapsing due to lack of blood flow because of that video.

It was pretty hot. Helena Christiansen was definitely compelling to watch.

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Limp_Elk_5520@reddit

Did they get pissed when you fired several rounds into your Jon Secada tv?

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Blametheorangejuice@reddit

[hands forward]

Iiiiiiiii…

[hands behind]

IIIIIIIIIIII….

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ChilledPoet@reddit

Don’t waaaaanna say…

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Sheriff_Mills@reddit

We actually didn't have cable in our area. It was weird because we lived in a largely populated area. My grandparents lived in a small town and they had it. My dad said if we ever could get cable we weren't getting "that goddamn MTV". I would watch it at friend's or relatives houses but that was it.

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jenorama_CA@reddit

Same here. We were too poor to pay for TV when I was a kid. My BFF had all of the channels, so I wasn’t completely uncultured as a teen.

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hells_cowbells@reddit

Same for me. I grew up in a small town, and we were outside the city limits, so no cable for me. I did watch it at friends houses, but i didn't have cable until college.

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hapster85@reddit

Same here. Had friends and other family who had cable, so I was able to watch MTV fairly often. My parents finally got cable in the late 90s, when their first grandchild (my oldest) asked them to. Talked about wrapped. 🤣

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Positron14@reddit

Yeah. We never had cable. I never watched MTV, or those other stations unless I was at my grandma's house.

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new2bay@reddit

Yeah, same here. We had one of those gigantic dishes that got us a few extra channels, but my parents would never have paid to watch TV in the 80s. The only time I ever watched MTV was when I was in college and would watch Beavis and Butt-Head at a friend of mine’s house. 😂

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I-LIKE-NAPS@reddit

Same, I didn't have cable until I '95 when after I graduated college and had my own place. But I did watch MTV (and VH1) at friends' houses when I was younger.

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ileentotheleft@reddit

My family didn’t get cable until autumn 1985 when I was in college, and only because there was a hurricane that knocked our antenna off the roof. Friday Night Videos on nbc was my main source of videos before then.

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pm_ur_duck_pics@reddit

Yes! I knew I remembered a show on regular TV.

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socksthekitten@reddit

My family didn't get cable either until the 90's. In the 80's, I'd record Friday Night Videos and play it the next day

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SVShooter@reddit

This. Back in the day when 4 channels on antenna were good enough and paying for cable was for suckers. (Plus I lived 4 miles outside a town and we didn’t get the option for cable until I was like 16)

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SirMellencamp@reddit

4 channels was never good enough

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swinks22@reddit

My parent paid for cable but blocked MTV (thankful for friends)

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JudgeJuryEx78@reddit

My parents had cable for several years but called the cable company and made them scramble the MTV specifically.

VH1 had most of the new stuff too, just with a lot more dad rock in the mix.

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Taranchulla@reddit

Same for me, although we lived in Palo Alto and they lived in San Francisco so it wasn’t too far. We used to spend a lot of time there. MTV was all I watched.

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sparksgirl1223@reddit

My parents too. I only watched occasionally at my friends house

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Ripley-Lancaster@reddit

Yep, my ol' man wouldn't pony up til around 1990 so it was all outside exposure prior to that. But, I was all aware of MTV for sure.

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EmbarrassedAd1869@reddit

Same.

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ReadRightRed99@reddit

Grandma’s alright. Grandpa’s alright. They just seem a little weird …

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exscapegoat@reddit

Surrender, but don’t give yourself away

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Dry-Drink-9297@reddit

MTV was paid? Here in Brazil it was free in the UHF signal. Well, MTVBrasil, a regional branch. I loved it.

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Randygilesforpres2@reddit

It was but there were free things to watch on air, like Friday night videos.

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cornbreadnclabber@reddit

MV3 with Richard Blade. 30 min a day of new wave ish videos .

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WackyWriter1976@reddit

Dang, lol. You sound just like me.

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camelslikesand@reddit

We had cable, including some movie channels, but my dad refused to pay for the package that included MTV. It was years later before I saw some of the most influential and popular videos.

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JenNtonic@reddit

My husband is from Canada. No MTV there. They had something very limiting called Much Music that just featured the biggies like Thriller. He had never seen Take On Me. I had to show him the other day because its one of the ones I remember clearly watching 😊

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toodledootootootoo@reddit

I’m from Canada. Much Music was great and we had access to all the same music videos. I’m not sure what your husband was watching. Take On Me was one of the most popular music videos of all time and we definitely had access to it along with all the other videos you guys were watching in the US, plus Canadian content as well. There were specialty shows for different genres as well where you could catch some less popular videos. We even had a French music channel called Musique Plus so if you lived in Quebec you got 2 music channels.

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shoresy99@reddit

MuchMusic was great. It launched in Sep 1984, just as I was starting university. I had a crush on Erica Ehm, one of their early VJs. The MuchMusic studio on Queen Street in Toronto become a tourist attraction.

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JenNtonic@reddit

So you’re saying my husband is lying for my attention and shock?? Wait. You’re probably right…

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toodledootootootoo@reddit

Ask him if Much Music Video Dance Party ever came to his school! lol

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Junior_Statement_262@reddit

Haha. My mom programed MTV out of the remote control. On the one day per week when I was a latchkey, I'd reprogram MTV back in and get my fix. I want my MTV! I loved Yo MTV Raps and a family member dated one of the VJ's.

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tacitjane@reddit

That was the 2nd channel on my channel surf list. There were about 25 so being number poopoo holds high praise.

Pretty much the same with everyone I knew.

My parents slept like rocks so I always had a ticket to the Headbangers Ball.

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Arch27@reddit

MTV was a huge part of my life especially in high school. Late night stuff like Liquid Television and Headbanger's Ball. I know friends that were similar but I don't think my wife was all that into it - in fact don't think she even had access to it.

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whatevertoad@reddit

I never got to watch MTV as a kid, but I still knew about it because of the song and friends talking about it. A lot of parents didn't allow it. I convinced a friend's dad to let his daughter and I watch it. He made us turn it off when Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video came on because it was inappropriate. So, probably not automatic for a lot of homes with parents who were protective. My mom just found videos really annoying. There was a video show that came on at some point on the weekend I think and our mom just wanted us to turn it off because she hated videos.

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Francl27@reddit

We didn't have cable. Going to my grandmother was a treat because she did, so we could watch MTV all day.

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picklepuss13@reddit

I basically only watched Nickelodeon or MTV as a kid.

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Kermit_The_Mighty@reddit

I grew up on a small island off the coast of New England. We didn't even get cable TV until I was almost out of high school. I never bothered with MTV even after.

I watched Friday Night Videos, though!

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BradBGeek@reddit

I was a die-hard MTV watcher. That’s ALL I watched in the early 80’s. #IWantMyMTV

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pocketdare@reddit

I was a huge fan of the videos as well. Too bad it all went to shit when the basically abandoned music and moved to "cultural programming".

For a while VH1 tried to pick up the slack by becoming "old MTV" but eventually we all moved on.

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wj333@reddit

Yeah, I think Remote Control was the beginning of the end of MTV. They went from game shows to reality TV and pushed out music altogether. For a while VH1 was an alternative. I don't quite remember how long Friday Night Videos ran, but I know I watched that nearly every week.

But I remember the first video I ever saw was The Metro, by Berlin, at a friend's house because we didn't have cable yet.

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Unusual_Memory3133@reddit

Friday Night Videos was on the air from ‘83-‘02 - later than most people think. Its last incarnation from 2001-2002 was called Late Friday - it dropped music entirely and was all stand up comedy. It didn’t really work.

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Maleficent_Ad_5175@reddit

Remote Control was the shit. Loved it

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yardkat1971@reddit

I still love that song.

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MyGrandmasCock@reddit

We called VH1 “The Michael Bolton Channel”. It was MTV for the sprayed bangs/high waisted jeans/Keds moms.

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ScreenTricky4257@reddit

#IWantMyMTV

Making that a hashtag is a kind of anachronism.

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BradBGeek@reddit

True.

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Bright_Name_3798@reddit

I went with my mom to her weekly hairdresser appointments because the stylist worked out of her house and let me watch TV in her family room. That and slumber parties I otherwise would not have gone to were the only ways I had access to MTV.

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marshdd@reddit

I grew up in the country. Got quoted $10k to run cable to Mom's house from road in 1988. I only got to watch videos on Friday night show at like 11 pm.

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Unusual_Memory3133@reddit

My husband’s family were wealthy and lived in a remote area where - at the time, in the late 70’s/early 80’s - it was not possible for their place to be wired for cable. Working class suburban me grew up absolutely glued to MTV. He experienced it at friends’ houses and later in College but it wasn’t a whole lifestyle for him like it was for me and my friends. It’s always seemed so odd that we are the same age and similar in so many ways but there is a definite MTV gap between us.

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Thebox2-2@reddit

I cannot relate to that at all. Every new Michael Jackson video premiere was pretty much the Super Bowl where I come from. I would watch for hours and hours and hours just to see David Lee Roth’s California Girls…but then again, I was a teenage boy, so…

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adbedient@reddit

We had it. Came with the cable package. My sister and brother were glued to it every second they could be. I quickly grew bored with 3-4 hour blocks of music videos.

I really couldn't have cared less. I never found it very interesting- it was almost as impossible to understand the words on TV as it was on the radio- and I couldn't give a damn what the musicians looked like.

Never spent much time watching. Laughed when MTV became "Real World" and Cribs 24x7.

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Chzncna2112@reddit

Most of my cable time was either friends or babysitting. While I was living with grandparents. Father finally decided that he wanted to "play" Father and he had cable. He worked graveyard and zero interest in changing shifts. So I basically had free run of Boise, until I had him sign papers that let me go into the military over a year before I turned 18. Boise was kind of boring after wandering L.A. streets when I could, especially Hollywood starting around just before age 9 by myself or occasionally friends.

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qedpoe@reddit

Her family was obviously in a cult. lol

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Luder714@reddit

I watched but honestly could take or leave it. My friend had cable early on and we ended up getting it when I was in high school (grad '86).

I do remember my one4 friend who had it early on. They would play videos from a few bands that were on the bleeding edge (like The Police) but seemed to run out of content so there would be times when there was nothing on and they would play weird graphics while edm-ish music played in the background( maybe that was the spot where local commercials were supposed to go IDK). I also remember a lot of live concerts like Journey and others.

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MrsDottieParker@reddit

I only watched it in the 1980s during summer breaks when we’d visit our dad in Reno. We did not have cable at my mom’s house until 1988 or so because we lived in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

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Due_Deal_6122@reddit

I’m so old I remember when MTV actually played videos 24/7.

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AustinGroovy@reddit

I didn't have cable (my friend did, spent a lot of time at his house). But we also saw them on Friday Night Videos.

For a date night, my GF found a bunch of MTV stuff on YouTUbe. We had a date night, ordered in, put bean bag chairs and inflatable mattress on the floor, and watched videos, Hollywood squares, Love Boat...

it was a good night.

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phillymjs@reddit

My parents were cheap and would never pay for cable. In their mind, TV was only what you could get for free with rabbit ears. I didn't get cable until 1994, after they both died and the house became mine.

I did get some exposure to MTV in the early 80s, but only because we had a summer house at the NJ shore for a few years when my uncle died and my family inherited his place. Down there, you had to have cable, and for a few years the local cable company gave all subscribers MTV for free until 7pm every day. I spent a lot of time parked in front of the TV on rainy days when I couldn't play outside, and could still probably recognize a lot of videos from '83-85 if you showed me clips with no sound.

Slightly related side note, I highly recommend this book. I read it a few months ago and it was fascinating, and laugh out loud funny in parts.

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Spazzy-Spice@reddit

I watched it from day one, totally addicted, my mom even had it hooked up to the stereo so we could blast it. My husband’s family couldn’t afford cable so he doesn’t get any of the references, but he saw the videos at the alternative teen dance clubs

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Psychological-Wash18@reddit

My parents wouldn't pay for it but us kids loved the music so much we'd watch it scrambled. i took babysitting jobs just so I could watch it.

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Grunt_In_A_Can@reddit

I will remember how exciting it was the moment MTV launched. I will recall to my dying day that first moment it came on!

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Bug_Calm@reddit

I had no cable until I moved away to college, so I didn't get to see much MTV, either.

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djutopia@reddit

Didn’t have mtv until later, but I watched “The Box” on uhf. Video jukebox channel. Also I think we got much music from Canada. (I was in Anchorage, AK.

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SIIHP@reddit

Parents never had cable. We all played outside sunrise to sundown. Then I never had TV when I moved out. Didnt see the point. I saw less than an hour of MTV until a few years ago. Didnt have TV until about 2014 when the now wife refused to live without it. Now I will occasionally put on ridiculousness but thats about it.

My parents now live where satellite is required for TV. They have 200 channels. They still watch only the local channels you would get with rabbit ears. 4,6,7,9 and occasionally 31. Lol

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MembershipSolid7151@reddit

I grew up with MTV. I’m a metal head so I enjoyed headbangers ball (not hair/glam metal) that stuff was for posers haha.

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WUSSIEBOY@reddit

Lived in Spain. We would get VCR tapes from a illegal video club.R regular TV recorded with all the current American shows lineup. Sometimes we would get a random MTV tape that was nothing but 8hrs of MTV recorded at a random time of day. This was MTV for me

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Maris-Otter@reddit

Cable didn't come to my small town until 1983

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Shawodiwodi13@reddit

I never understood the use of MTV. Why would you want to watch a video when you want to listen to music? So I didn’t really watch it that much when I grew up. Now MTV doesn’t have any music videos anymore.

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seigezunt@reddit

I didn’t watch it until I moved in with my mom late in my teens. Didn’t have cable before that. Of course MTV wasn’t around much before that lol

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Savings-Wallaby7392@reddit

I want my MTV ads aimed young people to get parents to sign up for MTV. Was not in original standard cable package

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PretendDuchess@reddit

My parents didn’t want to waste money on cable. The first time I had it was as an adult in my own apartment in the mid 90s.

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gramersvelt001100@reddit

My family had cable but it was '80's basic cable which was, like, fifteen channels. It wasn't until the early '90's that the basic cable package started to include MTV, Disney, Nickelodeon, basically a proto version of basic cable today.

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Velvet_Samurai@reddit

I think it was highly tied to being a music lover. My buddies and I all were, but we had friends that didn't care. It did seem like a lot of our girlfriends didn't really obsess over music like we did. Is it a gender thing?

I know right now my wife is not into music at all. I don't know how she lives. When I get in the car I need 60 seconds to get my phone hooked up and a playlist chosen for any drive no matter how short. She listens to the FM rock station that plays "Another Brick in the Wall" 4 times every day.

I'm not sure what her experience with MTV was back in the day though.

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Lemmon_Scented@reddit

We had cable but I didn’t care for MTV. I preferred my own imagination over how the videos represented the music. I was questioned/confronted about this at least a couple times back then and that is the answer I always provided.

I wasn’t so staunchly anti-MYV that I’d storm out of a room if it was on or anything like that, so I’m more or less familiar with the format, a couple of the more famous VJ’s and I’m acquainted with a fair number of videos, but in general, no thanks

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ConchFritter33040@reddit

It was automatic for me, despite my parents not wanting me to watch it. Remember Yo MTV Raps with Doctor Dre and Ed Lover? The first time I learned of U2 was when The Streets Have No Name.

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kegsbdry@reddit

I grew up with an antenna on my TV. There was no other option in no-wheres-ville.

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SimpleVegetable5715@reddit

My city banned it for a while for being a bad influence on the kids, like my school district banned anything to do with The Simpsons too. Bible Belt. Was very happy to get it back so I could watch Sifl and Olly and music videos before they were gone.

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Clear_Coyote_2709@reddit

I grew up in NYC in the 80’s. MTV, z100, soul train, break dancing at the subway stop, giant boom boxes on the street. Music was ubiquitous. Videos were the only thing i watched

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GonnaGoFat@reddit

I think it was a cable thing. In Canada we had and still have much music instead. But like MTV it was a cable thing. Also yes MTV debuted in the 80s the Band Dire Straights even had a song about it.

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frostedpuzzle@reddit

My mom wouldn't get cable. I watched MTV at other people's houses a bit, but I didn't get a lot of exposure to it.

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lajaunie@reddit

My wife was the same. Like ZERO music video knowledge. Hell, I mentioned someone finding their bees and she had no recollection of that either.

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CommitteeOfOne@reddit

I have no idea what "finding their bees" means.

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lajaunie@reddit

You’re killing me smalls.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVPNONdF58

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East-Garden-4557@reddit

Know the song well, never heard anyone say the phrase 'finding their bees'.

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CommitteeOfOne@reddit

Blind melon? Ugh. I can't stand that 90s music.

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lajaunie@reddit

Know that metal life! Been a metal head since I heard Too Fast For Love in 82! 🤘🏼

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SidMarcus@reddit

Hell yeah! 🤘🏻

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lajaunie@reddit

Too long, didn’t watch recap;

Little girl dressed as a bee goes around dancing for people that laugh her off until she finds a bunch of other people on bee costumes that all dance with her

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FinancialCry4651@reddit

I have zero music video knowledge because I grew up poor without cable. My husband is the opposite and he's constantly showing me music videos I missed out on.

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lajaunie@reddit

They’re an interesting time capsule of pop culture and fashion.

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DoppledBramble3725@reddit

MTV was a premium cable channel in my area in the mid-80's, I had VH1 which was mostly like a videos version of a second run movie theater otherwise it was Friday Night Videos

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Patient-01@reddit

Finally when I moved out. I decided to get mtv but but disappointed it was all teen show only thing was pop up video

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9fingerjeff@reddit

I was all about Mtv right up until the real world. I even liked the first season of that cuz it was something kinda different but the good days were soon to be over.

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XxThrowaway987xX@reddit

We didn’t have cable, so got none of the MTV or HBO experiences. We were just poor. Also didn’t have a microwave. What we did have that we looked forward to on network television was FRIDAY NIGHT VIDEOS. Iykyk. My hubs grew up middle class and never heard of them, just MTV.

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catgirl320@reddit

Yup same. Friday Night Videos was must watch for me. My best friend had MTV so we would watch it if her folks weren't watching TV.

My grandparents had MTV but I had to sneak watch it. I was visiting them when Purple Rain was released and thankfully got to watch all the hoopla around it 💜

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Pristine_Main_1224@reddit

MTV was dropped from our cable line-up in the mid-80s. Someone printed “I Want My MTV” yard signs in protest. The Bible-thumpers still won. We eventually did get VH1 and CMT. 🙄

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crematoryfire@reddit

The only MTV I was allowed to watch was at a friends house if they had it on. They always had it on.

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ChilledPoet@reddit

Rumor was, in my small town, the “town elders” banned it. I had TBS Nite Tracks though!!!

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hmmmpf@reddit

MTV came out in the months before I graduated HS. We didn’t have cable, and then I moved overseas for a year as an exchange student. Then I moved home and started college, but didn’t have a TV for years. So, yeah. MTV wasn’t a part of my GenX experience.

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notreallylucy@reddit

We had cable but I don't think we had MTV; I think mom tried to have it blacked out. My mom thought Full House was too racy. She thought five minutes of MTV would have sent me straight to hell.

There was a moral panic about MTV, and the slogan "I want my MTV!" didn't help anything. Lots of middle class parents thought their kids would learn to have drugs and do sex from watching it.

My guess is your girlfriend's parents thought the same thing.

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ZeldaHylia@reddit

I watched mtv early morning before school.. after school.. whenever I had time. I miss old mtv. Even the TRL days were fun.

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catvaq02@reddit

Wow I don't know anyone who didn't watch ot or know of it. Were they really religious??

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FinancialCry4651@reddit

We were poor.

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XxThrowaway987xX@reddit

Same. We watched Friday Night Videos once a week.

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Reverse-Recruiterman@reddit

I didn't see MTV unless I was at my cousins or friends' house.

I usually watched Friday Night Videos at sleepovers, which was on NBC.

I also watched U68 which was a UHF channel in NJ.

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travelgal13@reddit

MTV came out when I was in 7th or 8th grade I think… I’ve probably not watched more than literally 50 videos in my life! I don’t know why exactly. When I was in school I always had sports, friends, clubs… then I just never got into it. My husband is my age and can’t believe I don’t know most of the iconic videos of our time.

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war_eagle_keep@reddit

Watched it at my grandparents house, I was there most days right after school, they got one of the first cable boxes with the 5 push buttons up top - it added USA, CNN, ESPN, MTV, and HBO to our normal 2-13 channels on VHF. I thought it was the coolest thing ever but I was a little too young (sheltered?) for MTV until about 1987. Then I started watching at their place and when I got home I could bring in the scrambled channel on our TV and listen to the music.

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Emerald_Eyed_Gal@reddit

We weren’t allowed to watch videos or MTV. I still rarely watch them because it wasn’t a part of my childhood.

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wwgardiner@reddit

I can actually remember watching mtv when I was 5 or 6 years old. And I watched it throughout my teens and early adult life. It and ESPN were the only 2 channels I watched damn near 24 hrs a day. 120 minutes, liquid television and of course Headbangers Ball. The only thing I hate is how quickly it changed from music to reality. The kids today have no idea what they are missing.

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MDEnce@reddit

My tiny town (~120) was too small to have cable. But one of my friends in the next town over (that was bigger) DID have cable, and it even carried MTV. We all hung out there as often as we could.

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Suspicious_Plane6593@reddit

Never had it. But I was raised in a cult.

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FadingOptimist-25@reddit

Weird?!?! I watched MTV from 1982 to 1984-ish nonstop. During sleepovers, we would act out videos, especially Men at Work “Who Can It Be Now?”

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Late_Football_2517@reddit

Remember "I want my MTV" as a slogan?

That was because A LOT of regional cable companies refused to carry MTV.

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RangerMatt76@reddit

I grew up in a small town that had no cable service. My parents weren’t going to waste money on a big watt dish. But we got all of the broadcast stations from both Fresno and Bakersfield.

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JTMissileTits@reddit

I got by on Friday Night Videos because we didn't have cable. We had 3 channels until Dad got an extra piece for the antenna that gave us four more channels. My hs boyfriend did have cable so I watched some MTV. Mostly Beavis and Butthead.

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L1ndsL@reddit

I almost never watched MTV, so I suppose I’m another unicorn.

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schlock_@reddit

Cable? In the 80's? nope.

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Momofcats74@reddit

I never watched it growing up. We didn't have cable, only the big 3 networks.

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Sitting_pipe@reddit

MTV was very influential for me...I think there are Gen-X ranges for MTV influence, for me i remember the day it came on with Video Killed the radio star, i watched it off and on until 1983 when we moved into an apartment that had free cable. I watched it heavily form 87to 92 when the first real world aired. I got busy and stopped watching after that.

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ob1dylan@reddit

The East Texas town I grew up in banned MTV when I was around 13. We were right where the Bible Belt buckles, and the church that owned half the town decided it was corrupting the youth, much like dancing in Footloose. I got to enjoy the early years of MTV, then nothing until I went away to college, and by that time, it was about halfway through its transition from music videos all day and night to neverending, blatantly staged, moronic "reality shows."

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CanadianExiled@reddit

My family lived in the middle of nowhere, cable wasn't even an option for us until 1994.

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Marlbey@reddit

We lived in a mid-sized market with cable, but it wasn't part of the cable package in our area until 1985.

Literally, OP, that's why they ran all of those promos with Billy Idol saying "call your cable operator and say 'I WANT MY MTV!'" (Because MTV wasn't included in cable everywhere.)

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SirMellencamp@reddit

Yeah the joke back then was “how are you supposed to know to call your cable company to get MTV if you don’t have MTV, Billy”

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Marlbey@reddit

The promo ran on non-MTV stations (as well as a wall to wall MTV interstitial).

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William_Redmond@reddit

Same. If I wanted cable I had to go to grandma’s house to watch MTV and scrambled porn

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raisinghellwithtrees@reddit

We were in the middle of nowhere but cable reached us a bit sooner, about 1990 iirc. However, the cable company refused to offer MTV because it was the devil's playground.

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londongas@reddit

And even then you'd be watching muchmusic or musique plus

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CanadianExiled@reddit

I heard a legend that we had MTV for a few weeks before the CRTC kicked them off. But I never looked into it.

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whuaminow@reddit

I lived in a rural zone between a bunch of suburbs. Outside of cable range but over the air TV was all my parents would have had anyway (who PAYS for TV????). The irony was that my cousins that lived 100 miles away from the large metro area had to get cable for any TV reception.They were much older by 10+ years, so I saw a lot of stuff at their house, like MTV and Poltergeist when I was probably a little young for them. When I was in college and got free basic cable in my dorm I was elated to be able to watch "120 Minutes" every week.

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freddbare@reddit

They hadn't run the lines to my side of town.. by the time I was out it they rarely played my music

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AbsintheRedux@reddit

I remember that monumental day when MTV went live on the air, I just sat there on the couch, mouth open like a little codfish as video killed the radio star. It was glorious. Thank you for this awesome trip down memory lane.

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canfullofworms@reddit

Go back in time with the first 2 hours of MTV here

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canfullofworms@reddit

Go further in that memory with this!

https://youtu.be/PJtiPRDIqtI?si=AeWu5hzUjsNAvV33

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caryn1477@reddit

My parents didn't have cable. The only time I got to watch MTV is when we went to my grandparents house. My brother and I were glued to the TV when we were there.

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Academic_Ad_8229@reddit

We didn’t have cable and my parents were not about to pay for it so I could watch MTV. I had to go to a friends house to watch it. However, Friday Night Videos was an adequate substitute.

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jwismar@reddit

Watched it back when they used to play music videos. Feels like that phase didn't last long.

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MundaneHuckleberry58@reddit

PlutoTV (free) has several channels of music videos. I low key love it. Play it in the background all the time.

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SirMellencamp@reddit

Youtubetv has MTV Classic. Nothing but videos

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DRG28282828@reddit

Cable tv was only offered at first in certain suburbs of Chicago. Mine wasn’t one of them but I got to watch when I babysat on Saturday nights. I loved it and couldn’t wait to put the kids to bed and watch videos and concerts all night. I was introduced to so much great music through MTV. I can’t imagine not watching it at that time.

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SirMellencamp@reddit

I was talking about this recently. MTV was on every time I was at a friends house

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Downtown_Dish6866@reddit

I lived a neighborhood that didn’t yet have cable. Do I went down the street a few blocks to a friends house to watch. I remember watching JJ Jackson, Martha Quinn & Alan Hunter.

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wild_ones_in@reddit

MTV TOWN!

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Prestigious-Fan3122@reddit

I'm 62. My dad got his first computer in the 1980s, when he was in his 70s, so he did all of his "googling/Internet research" by reading cONSUMER REPORTS magazine, and other print sources of info. We absolutely weren't poor, but my parents were frugal. We didn't have color TV until I was in 10th grade. My father wasn't going to buy a color TV until the manufacturers had all the cakes worked out of it. (I remember my mother going next-door to watch one of Richard Nixon's daughters get married on our neighbors color TV when I was very young)

When cable TV came to our town, my dad finally decided to go buy a color TV. He enjoyed movies, but didn't enjoy going to movie theaters, so we got HBO, but with a lock box on it that literally had a key. My mother was too worried about me seeing "dirty movies". () For seventh through ninth grade I was a latchkey kid because my mom worked, and she drove morning carpool, while the neighbors mom drove afternoons.)

I was in college when MTV first came on the airwaves(as my grandkids will say it when they are many decades older "when it first started streaming") I remember watching MTV(as well as David Letterman's first late night talk show) in my college apartment.

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Ok_Dragonfruit7353@reddit

Not everyone had access to cable then. We didn’t until about ‘85 and then without for a year or two in the late ‘80s. That was even worse because I knew what I was missing.

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CokeNSalsa@reddit

We didn’t have MTV growing up. I only ever saw it at a friend’s house.

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TropicFreez@reddit

Off topic...

The Real World was the beginning of the end for MTV, and TV in general I guess. How many 'reality' bullshit shows since then? TLC used to be an educational channel, now all they show is reality bullshit.

How many reality shows about obscenely overweight fatties need to exist? Serious question...

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grateful_john@reddit

Cable came to my parent’s town very late, I don’t think we had cable before I graduated college in 1988. We had cable in my frat house in college but we never watched MTV (we mainly watched football and Scarface which seemed to be available 24x7).

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MrMcBrett@reddit

Mine was the only house on the block with cable and I lived in the finished basement. I thought I was popular until my older brother broke the news, my friends liked my TV more.

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ElderberryMaster4694@reddit

I loved MTV. Huge crush on Kennedy. Aeon flux was a revelation.

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sporkmanhands@reddit

And Maxx Liquid Television in general

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TechnicalWelder6789@reddit

Aeon Flux was groundbreaking! Still watch bits and pieces of it on YouTube

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ElderberryMaster4694@reddit

I have it on dvd and play it at my bar

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TechnicalWelder6789@reddit

My kind of bar! I would love to see that.

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KaleidoscopeSad4884@reddit

Kennedy was my favorite. And now she’s a conservative commentator I can’t stand.

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WackyWriter1976@reddit

Yeah, I liked her kooky self then. Now? No thanks.

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Beetlebug12@reddit

I was in love with John Sencio 😍

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_RLW_@reddit

I and everybody I knew back then were completely addicted to MTV. I’d watch it for hours on end. It was especially great in the early days before they got commercials.

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sporkmanhands@reddit

Before reality tv it was awesome

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IceNein@reddit

And things other than videos. First it was Remote Control, then it was The Real World, and that was the beginning of the end.

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_RLW_@reddit

By the time Remote Control hit I had moved on to college and the original VJs had started to be replaced. I watched the channel occasionally at that point but nothing like I did from 81-85. Certainly when Real World ruined the network I had fully stopped watching.

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sporkmanhands@reddit

No cable it parents locked out mtv since it was pretty racy for the time

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AdAcrobatic7236@reddit

I always thought this was the reason that people seemingly only listened to hair metal until they were liberated by Nirvana. I had and watched MTV from the onset but I left for university and never watched it again. Do my recollection that era is more REM, U2, Pixes, Janes Addiction, Sonic Youth, Smiths, Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Stone Roses, and the like. Hair metal to me would have been Guns n Roses but I've never considered them hair metal then or now. Well, not 100% true — I was aware of the hair bands, just didn't relate to them. So, not a unicorn, just a little untethered from the Mother ship.

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firehawk2324@reddit

I grew up in the country with rabbit ears, but my grandparents had cable and the moment MTV went on the air (yes I was there) it was the only channel I'd watch when visiting them daily.

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TJH99x@reddit

We got cable really early. I remember the salesperson coming to our house and sitting at our kitchen table with my parents to sign them up. I insisted on having MTV in our package! Eventually we got a pirate box and had all the channels. That was the best. I was basically raised by cable tv.

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LogicTrolley@reddit

You had to be able to afford cable. Some of us were so poor we could barely pay attention...

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Balrog71@reddit

We had to wank the dog to feed the cat

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Shurglife@reddit

Yooo...

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IceNein@reddit

Please never say this again 🤣

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mahjimoh@reddit

We lived so far out of town that we didn’t have cable, only got two network channels…but my parents bought a satellite dish (back when they were like 8’ across) and bam! That was in 1982 so I missed the very very beginning of MTV but we had it after that.

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OGMom2022@reddit

It was amazing. I remember exactly where I was when they played the first video. I’m an audiophile and was instantly hooked.

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Affectionate-Map2583@reddit

We didn't have cable available where I lived, so it was Friday Night Videos, and Colorsounds on PBS for me. I suppose I saw some MTV at a friend's house or at a hotel or something, but it would have been rare.

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Turdulator@reddit

gif

This was life.

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brendini511@reddit

We didn't get cable until my sophomore year of high school, when we moved somewhere that it was included with the rent. We were definitely not middle class. I remember one house we lived in, we were going to get cable but we were 1 house too far from the wire.

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MiserabilityWitch@reddit

I did not have access to cable until I started dating someone in college in '85, and I was able to watch at his house. My apartment complex where I lived during high school was the last place in my town to get cable installed, right after we moved out.

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kae0603@reddit

My parents would never pay for that!?

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Taira_Mai@reddit

Lived in a rural town and didn't get cable until the mid-1990's and that was the microwave "cable" where you had to point an antenna at a transmitter on a mountain.

We got CNN, USA, Cinemax, Univisoin, a few other channels and MuchMusic (the Canadian knock-off MTV).

The only time I saw MTV was at my cousin's house or at the house of a friend who lived in town.

I didn't see MTV or MTV2 until I moved out for grad school.

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splorp_evilbastard@reddit

I watched a ton of MTV. My wife did not, but she's 9 years younger than me. MTV was on its way downhill by the time she was an early teen and compete crap by the time she was in high school.

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TheSkepticCyclist@reddit

I was never a big fan of MTV. Mainly because I didn’t care for most pop music. The most of the bands I listened to were not on MTV, classic rock from the 60s and 70s, and modern 80s metal

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valr1821@reddit

A lot of people didn’t have cable in those days. My household was on the opposite side of the spectrum - my dad was a movie buff so we had full cable and were one of the few households we knew which had premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.). We had a standing afternoon appointment with MTV when we got home from school.

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hiplainsdriftless@reddit

I never really liked music videos. First music videos I liked were on CMT in the early 90’s.

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zippyphoenix@reddit

We didn’t get cable. I also just preferred radio. By the time I was in college I was more into watching daytime soaps.

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nixtarx@reddit

Have almost the same experience with my wife, but it's because her small town's community cable refused to carry it.

Worst part? Her dad was on the board.

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Shirabatyona32@reddit

Alot of the video are now on the xm 80s channel

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doomonyou1999@reddit

I lived in a small town and basic cable didn’t have mtv.

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nycinoc@reddit

sadly there are those in life who will never know the joy of MTV or more importantly trying to decipher what was going on over at \~\~Cinemax\~\~ Skinemax

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-DethLok-@reddit

Australian here, MTV was a US thing, not global, so no, I didn't watch MTV either.

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CrowWhich6468@reddit

In my entire neighborhood, only one neighbor had cable, and they were kind of snobby about it rubbing it in your face, letting you watch five minutes and then shutting it off, but constantly talking about it everywhere else

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DeLaOcea@reddit

gif

Animation was different: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, REN & Stimpy, the short ones like Migranian Boy, etc…

I didn’t had MTV until the local cable of a mid size town in Mexico offered it, this was in 1991. In the late 80’s I only could have access to it through a friend that had a parabolic antenna.

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polishprince76@reddit

My wife's parents only let her watch VH1. So she knows videos, but only the safe ones. She knows about unplugged, but natalie merchant and eric clapton. She never saw the nirvana or alice in chains ones.

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JollyGiant573@reddit

I was watching new years eve. I know what song was played first in 1984 do you?

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No_Permission6405@reddit

Video killed the radio star.

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nosrepmodnara@reddit

By the time I had more than 3 channels MTV was basically a reality TV station

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StrawberryKiss2559@reddit

What was her reaction to watching MTV with you? Was she bored or was she enthralled?

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SoCal7s@reddit

I would keep an eye on your Sweetheart.

Might be a Russian sleeper spy like “the Americans”

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puddingcakeNY@reddit

Thing are topsy-turvy!

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LBbird24@reddit

My parents didn't have cable until 2008.

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KellieinNapa@reddit

Not only did we not have it in our house but I was forbidden to watch it. However, I couldn't wait to watch it for hours and hours when I'd go to a friends' house

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Murky_Possibility_68@reddit

My house in the suburbs couldn't get cable until after I was in college.

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Taranchulla@reddit

I remember watching MTV at my grandparents’ house and always hoping that Like a Virgin would come on, which it inevitably did.

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Thomisawesome@reddit

I grew up in a kind of rural area that didn’t have cable. (Either that, or my dad really pulled one over on us.)

But I remember going to friends’ houses and being amazed by Liquid Television and Beavis and Butthead.

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SnowblindAlbino@reddit

I'm pushing 60 and in my entire life only had cable TV for one year (1993-1994) when it was "free" in an apartment complex I lived in. When I was in high school (early 80s) there wasn't any MTV in our town initially, but I do remember people recording it on VHS in another town and playing those tapes on a rear-projection TV at the sole arcade we had...I specifically recall seeing the videos for "Hungry Like the Wolf" abd "Centerfold" in that arcade. Otherwise, the only time I saw videos in the 80s was at a girlfriend's house where they had cable and we'd watch...Night Tracks? Something like that, which was on WTBS on Friday nights at midnight.

So I'm the right age for MTV, more or less, but I've never had access to it and certainly never watched it for more than a few specific events (I did see Live Aid in real time at a friend's house, our town cable system had MTV by that point).

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stromm@reddit

I’m 55. My family got six channels of cable TV in 1975. We got our first computer in 77. Soon after we got QUBE. It was thirty channels of cable/local networks. It had a bulk wired remote, and even had interactive games.

I was a tv junky, but I rarely watched mTV. It just wasn’t my thing for music. I think the most I watched in it was during parties where Beavis and Butthead was on. And then much later some Road Rules or House Rules. But definitely Catfish.

I only remember a couple hosts, when I see them or hear their names. I can’t tell you anything about any music videos except maybe a couple Meatloaf, YMCA, Men at Work, Thriller of course, and now I’m drawing a blank.

mTV definitely was not a big deal around me or in my group of friends.

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timberwolf0122@reddit

Three words. BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD

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vulchiegoodness@reddit

We had a huge satellite dish in the back yard, for like a million channels, MTV was, thankfully, one of them. My SO called life changed my world!

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Fimbir@reddit

I didn't see any MTV (or much TV my father wasn't watching) until I went to college. Then I ran into people in the basement lounge watching Next Gen and Liquid Television.

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errantwit@reddit

I definitely grew up with MTV. Day One viewer.

I missed a bunch the second half of the eighties, in Olympia, without cable. I late remember watching Unplugged regularly -- and it's where I learned Cobain died when I was deployed.

They invented reality TV with Real World.

Then MTV became less fun to watch, so around 1995.

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Working_Gene7926@reddit

MTV was a huge part of my tweens and teens.

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yellowrose04@reddit

I literally ran home from school to watch trl with Carson Daly every day. What a vibe man.

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Status-Effort-9380@reddit

We didn’t have cable but I could watch it in the school lounge or at friends’ houses.

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Djrussell@reddit

My stepdad was unemployed for most of our childhood. I remember watching MTV with him at lunch during the summer. 1800DIALMtv. I remember the contests they would hold. The conservative family coalition had MTV removed from our local cable company for a year from what I recall.

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Butterbean-queen@reddit

Didn’t have cable. My grandmother did. My cousins watched it. I never did.

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DaMmama1@reddit

A lot of people didn’t get to enjoy MTV back when it was actually music tv :(

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SteveinTenn@reddit

Cable TV wasn’t even available where I lived. Too far out in the boonies. And a satellite dish cost a grand. That wasn’t gonna happen in my house.

I had a couple of friends who had MTV and when I got a VCR I gave them blank tapes and they’d record a few hours for me. I was shocked to learn cable TV had commercials, but I got to see some videos.

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HumpaDaBear@reddit

I remember when it was only on a few hours a time before full launch

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poreworm@reddit

My friends would tease me all the time. We never had cable despite having a sailboat and sister that was a total horse girl. They’d recite my channels in under 3 seconds. We also never had a game console. No Atari, ColecoVision, Nintendo, Sega, etc. So references to MTV, You Cant Do That on Television, etc., were lost on me. When I’d spend the night at friends I’d always want to play Joust on the Atari and late night movies on Cinemax.

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twick2010@reddit

I remember tuning in when it first aired. Was a junkie after that. Until it went to shit.

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SuspiciousLookinMole@reddit

We only had cable off and on when I was a kid until I was in high school. Even when we did have cable, MTV, the Simpsons, really all the cool stuff was forbidden by my religious parents.

I would watch occasionally at a friend's house, but if I wasn't at home, my friends and I didn't watch a lot of TV, or their parents had the same rules as mine.

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Difficult-Ad4364@reddit

No cable in my house, went to college and the cable there only had VH1. So no music culture at all.

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Comfortable_Year4081@reddit

My husband didn’t have cable in his area back in the 80’s. He was middle class but a few mins outside of town, just far enough that cable hadn’t gone down his street yet. I watched MTV every day.

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bbbbbbbssssy@reddit

Unicorn here. I was kinda into the local video shows when I was like 9 and 10 but no cable in my hood. I got exposure to it in suburbs that had cable & thought it was for old people. Had finally at age 13 and again felt like it was old people stuff mostly. At 13 maybe I thought 20 year olds were ancient or something but the music seemed like dusty and guys with feathered hair who were 24 but SEEMED 50. Never got into it until liquid television. Then that ended. Also: I am a lover of music.... just not music television.

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romulusnr@reddit

This probably would apply to my first serious girlfriend, who had been raised entirely on NPR and PBS and never allowed to watch anything else (they may not have had cable, as she says they were poor growing up).

She did not get a SINGLE fucking 80s reference. It was so gorram painful. Bueller? Bueller? What's a Bueller? It was a very Hello McFly sort of thing. Ay caramba.

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SourCabbage@reddit

I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and our cable company didn't offer it. I talked my mom into calling the cable company and asking about it and they said that they didn't feel it was appropriate for their only package offering.

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masstransit4u@reddit

We were in the NY Metro area and got a cable box early. I remember there being weird access channel playing the white background videos, early Robert Palmer, Elvis Costello. One day a guy with a blond mullet pops up telling me they're gonna be playing this stuff 24/7. Hell yeah sign me up, Alan Hunter!

It was all kind of weird and exciting in the first year or two. Who knew it would be a passing fad, basically?

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brickbaterang@reddit

Eh, i watched it when it first came out but i got real bored of it real fast.

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Consistent-Ease-6656@reddit

I grew up in the sticks. We could only pick up one radio station, and had a GIANT aerial antenna on the house (not that it helped). Whatever MTV I saw, was at someone else’s house.

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aluminumnek@reddit

MTV was banned by the local cable provider because of the Yankee Rose video by David Lee Roth. Years later, the cable company changed their tune. By that time I wasn’t really watching TV anymore.

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Expert_Habit9520@reddit

That just sounds insane. The video has some weird little stuff in it, but cause a complete ban of the network? Seems like there’s literally 1000s of videos more controversial than that one.

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aluminumnek@reddit

This was in the south during the 80s. down here if the religious right flinches they have a fit.

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Expert_Habit9520@reddit

Gotcha. Yeah, I am even a smidgen religious myself but I totally get it, sometimes the hardcore fundamentalists live by a different set of rules than the rest of us.

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aluminumnek@reddit

They don’t call it the Bible belt for nothing. Ha ha.

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Whodean@reddit

What about Friday Night Videos?

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LaVida2@reddit

Being latchkey, an army brat, and an only child, tv and books were my baby sitter and I loved it. Even had a tv in my room. I didn’t really go outside to play that often, but I have experienced “drinking from the water hose” and “staying out until the street lights came on”. Maybe that’s what her childhood consisted of 🤷🏽‍♀️ outdoor adventures > watching tv.

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fuzzypotatopeel72@reddit

Thanks to the old C-Dish, we had MTV east & west on the farm. My daily escape

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6dp1@reddit

I hated mtv

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fjvgamer@reddit

I was 15 in 85 to give perspective.

I grew up on Long Island new york, and fondly remember wasting MTV and my circle of friends watched too. Also I remember a lot of kids did not have cable, or did not have a TV available cause the parents were watching or whatever.

This is a gut feeling but I'd guess maybe half the people I ran into didn't really watch mtv, into the early 90s at least. I stopped watching mtv about that time.

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Sad-Corner-9972@reddit

Not every cable company carried MTV from its inception.

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exscapegoat@reddit

I’m older X and cable wasn’t available in my neighborhood until I went away to college. I did watch Friday night videos though. We didn’t have cable in the dorms. So it was only available in places like the tv lounge or the student union. And it depended on what other people wanted to watch.

Even when I moved off campus in 1986, depended on people’s schedules. I was a night owl and the roomie closest to the living room had an early schedule. When I got my own apartment, I binged the hell out of it

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Training-Opposite-17@reddit

I wasn’t allowed to watch MTV. 😔

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keirmeister@reddit

MTV was the voice of our generation. I totally watched it since it debuted. Of course, “Friday Night Videos” (which came it a few years later) was also a favorite since it didn’t need cable and was an “event” for buddies to hang around each other’s houses to watch.

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pacifistpotatoes@reddit

We didn't have cable. Only antenna channels. We also had no gaming systems except for a computer!

So yea I grew up with no mtv.

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CA5P3R_1@reddit

I grew up with MTV as part of my daily life, but my wife grew up in the middle of nowhere with like 3 channels.

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Quirky_Commission_56@reddit

My parents didn’t get cable until it included internet as well, which didn’t happen until I was in college. In middle and high school I only got to watch MTV on weekend nights that I’d spend the night at my best friend’s house, who had cable.

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Big-Sheepherder-6134@reddit

My GF grew up too poor for cable and never had MTV in the 80’s. I had it starting in 1982. We had it on all the time. Anyone wanting to know my 80’s life as a teenager can watch the John Hughes movies like Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck, Home Alone, etc. which were all filmed in my area.

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buginmybeer24@reddit

My parents didn't get cable until I went to college. I only watched it at my friend's house.

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goodmantl@reddit

I lived in a small, rural town that only had a very basic cable package offered by the local cable company. MTV was typically a channel we were able to access but I lived in the freaking Bible Belt and my incredibly conservative neighbors decided to protest MTV so it was blocked from our options. Could it be something like that for her? This was in Tennessee btw.

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Paperbackpixie@reddit

I got MTV as a channel as part of my birthday gift that year

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lazytiger40@reddit

I never saw MTv in its early years, no cable etc...i caught it towards the end when all the crap filler shows came on

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supenguin@reddit

We didn’t have cable so no MTV. I watched at a friend’s house once in a while, but we’re talking maybe twice a year.

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Dr_Overundereducated@reddit

I was living abroad when MTV came out. A family friend sent a VHS tape full of videos. Now and then I hear a song and announce “ that was on my MYV tape!”

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rainbowpantz@reddit

Dad always said we couldn’t have MTV because he didn’t like rock music and didn’t want us watching that trash. When we’d complain too much and get Mom on our side, he’d threaten to also get CMT and that whenever he was home, that’s what we’d have to watch. So we’d always give up.

We watched it at Grandmas house instead…

The real reason was that he was just cheap and cable was expensive.

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TheEvilOfTwoLessers@reddit

I barely ever watched TV. Very few shows from the 80s or 90s more than a few episodes. The only MTV I ever really watched was in the 90’s, that adult cartoon anthology that included The Maxx, and even then not often.

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Smilneyes420@reddit

I remember when MTV started. They played music videos and weren’t 24 hrs. The Buggles video killed the radio star was the first video.

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lildreemr@reddit

Headbangers Ball 🤘🏽

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ButterscotchKey7780@reddit

I had MTV from the very first night it aired, and I was absolutely hooked. My BFF and I used to watch it all afternoon after school and call each other to talk about it; neither of us had a phone cord that would reach all the way to the TV, so we'd call during commercials, then hang up and go watch some more. At the state fair in 1981 we kept going back to the booth where the cable company was giving out small MTV buttons with different designs. I doodled the MTV logo during geometry class. I remember Blue Oyster Cult's "Burning for You" almost in its entirety. I bought every Split Enz album because of "One Step Ahead."

But yeah, I've met very few people who were into it the same way I was, or remember many individual videos.

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lildreemr@reddit

Headbangers Ball 🤘🏽

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TypicalCode1579@reddit

gif

I grew up watching MTV in the 80’s. My parents always had it on. I loved this video.

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Awilson841@reddit

I had cable/mtv but rarely watched videos, they were boring and repetitive to me but watched Real World when it came out.

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heffel77@reddit

Got home from school, watched the end of the Cubs day game on WGN and then MTV until my mom got home and watched Moonlighting or some shit and I had to go to my room and play Zelda or watch ALF or something

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Bzzzzzzz4791@reddit

No cable. I had to go to my friend’s house to watch it and Comedy Central

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Civil_Concentrate_23@reddit

Same. No cable until I was in my late 20s. Watching many videos for the first time much later in life!

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Recynd2@reddit

I saw it when it came onto the air and watched other video shows, but my parents were restrictive with the TV. Plus, my musical taste went outside the bounds of MTV.

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MonkeyTraumaCenter@reddit

I didn't have cable growing up, but my friends did and I took whatever chance to watch MTV when I could. Some of my friends had illegal cable and we took what chance we could to watch certain channels.

So I wasn't up to date on most videos (in fact, I discovered more music via the radio), but if you want me to tell you what happened on a specific episode of Saved by the Bell, I can tell you.

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Carnivorous_Mower@reddit

We didn't get it in New Zealand until about 1996 or 1997.

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Good_Nyborg@reddit

I remember watching MTV from when it first released, but stopped watching it shortly after they started having game shows; think it was the later 80's at that point and I was almost done with High School.

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jawshoeaw@reddit

I never watched it. Tried a few times and got bored. I have my own mental pictures for music that didn't really align with the videos.

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Guitar_Nutt@reddit

My parents would get cable, the only time I saw MTV was the two weeks at a friends beach house each summer. Heaven.

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cabo169@reddit

I bet she was watching the Luke and Laura saga on General Hospital soap opera.

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Leanintree@reddit

No cable when I was young. This was pre-sattelite as well. We had Friday Night Videos, and they were cherished. Later came MTV and Headbangers Ball.

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Katriina_B@reddit

I only watched Headbanger's Ball.

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TechnicalWelder6789@reddit

Fuck yeah!

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jumpinoutofmyflesh@reddit

We had basic cable. Never paid for the box. Still used the TV’s knob. BUT we learned that if we put the knob on a specific channel and turned the fine tuning all the way to the left, it would be MTV. Easily the best hack of my childhood.

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FalseQuestion7864@reddit

I never watched any television on a regular basis... I watched an episode here and there, but I never followed a shows plot for any length of time. I was born in '77, and watched shows like Bewitched and Gilligan's Island... Family Ties... Growing Pains, etc. My parents didn't get Cable until 1992... I'm the oldest, and I was a Sophomore in high school... and I watched MTV for hours at a time... Beavis and Butthead... The Real World for the first couple of seasons... MTV Beach House... Singled Out. I guess I helped take MTV from strictly awesome music videos to just another crappy cable channel. There was a sweet spot around the mid-90s, where you could still see hours of music videos and some pretty cool shows, but it was all downhill from there.

I didn't start actually watching shows until after I got married and divorced... 2006, I think... and it was me buying seasons 1 and 2 of 'The OC' and binge watched it. In fact, I still haven't watched a TV show where you have to wait from week to week or night to night. I'll wait for an entire season to air, then watch it... and now a lot of them do that anyway.

Anyway... my whole point is that MTV is the only television that I faithfully watched while growing up. So, it's weird for me to hear about your wife... as a guy who didn't watch television... I definitely watched MTV!

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gentleoutson@reddit

My town wouldn’t allow MTV. Devil music.

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runningoutofwords@reddit

When were you guys watching all this TV?

Precious little time in the school year, and we were outside playing in the summer. I don't know what hours people were dedicating to all this.

Granted, we didn't have cable, but I got the channels... and friends had satellite dishes (the old big ones). They could pick up MTV and we'd watch it at night on sleepovers sometimes. But it was certainly never a priority.

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jaeldi@reddit

We turned it on as a radio in our house. Me and my sisters would run in to see exclusive new videos when we hear them from the other rooms.

The tradition continues on YouTube. Popular new Music videos have literally billions of views on YouTube. They overshadow everything.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-viewed_YouTube_videos#Historical_most-viewed_videos

Meanwhile, there are probably people reading this thinking, "I'm on YouTube all the time and have never watched music video!"

Lol

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TechnicalWelder6789@reddit

Next door neighbor was a lineman for the power company. Dad was an electrician. Between them, they figured out how to get free cable and HBO to both of our houses. It was great. I remember staying up late to watch the first time Thriller was shown on MTV! It was huge!

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bigwomby@reddit

Where I lived, MTV was part of the cable extra package, meaning you needed a converter box to get it. We didn’t get it till the summer of ‘86.

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No_Ask3786@reddit

MTV was so formative for me- music, Headbanger’s Ball, Yo MTV Raps, Liquid Television…

My wife didn’t have cable- solid middle class but her dad was cheap lol-

Occasionally there are gaps in our pop-culture sensibilities

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FatGuyOnAMoped@reddit

I never had it either. I lived in an area without cable TV for most of my childhood. We finally got cable TV service in the mid-80s, but my mother refused to pay for it. I had a friend who had it, but his parents locked out MTV because they feared it was satanic (this was during peak "Satanic Panic" times).

I would occasionally stay up late and watch shows like Friday Night Videos or Night Flight but I didn't get MTV until I was in my 20s and living on my own. And by then, it didn't even show videos!

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niktaeb@reddit

I envied the city kids. In 1980, when it came out, they’d run the MTV ads with all the rockstars saying their version of “I want my MTV” over regular (vhs antenna) broadcasts. We had two channels when i was growing up, and cable wasn’t on the menu in rural Oregon.

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itoshiineko@reddit

I lived in Cleveland from 81-85 and in the city we didn’t have cable. The suburbs did though. The only time I could watch MTV was spending the night at this one friend’s house who had cable.

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Xistential0ne@reddit

Remember when MTV played music?

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24STSFNGAwytBOY@reddit

It was cable..most middle folks were still antennae in the 80’s.My rich buddies used to play by play the newest videos to my black and white tv watching ass!😂😂😂😂😂👍

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AnnieB512@reddit

I didn't have cable growing up. I think I was out of my parents house by the time they got it and I was the baby in the family, so 1984ish. I was exposed to MTV at other people's houses. By the time I got cable, MTV was more tv shows than music.

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padeye242@reddit

We lived in the country without cable. By the time I got out on my own, MTV was just starting to dabble in reality tv. I may have had about ten years of it. Now I don't watch tv programming at all. The last thing we regularly watched was Lost 😄

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Oriencor@reddit

Nope. We had maybe six station - the big three, a local, PBS and then some station that was like PBS & the movie like UHF had a lovechild, a laserdisc player and a vcr.

I got to watch MTV at other people’s houses.

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ZipperJJ@reddit

We didn’t get cable until 1991. Before that we would spend hours watching MTV at the neighbor’s and at our cousins’. I think it’s kind of weird having memories of us just all sitting around watching videos.

But once we got it I watched it all day and all night. Loved it!

Did your wife’s cable package have MTV? It wasn’t available everywhere.

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Aeribous@reddit

We had no cable you rich bastard. I only saw mtv at friends houses

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cfinchchicago@reddit

They didn’t run cable by our house at the farm, best I could do was Friday Night Videos. Which was a lot of the good stuff, but 120 Minutes had to wait til I got to college.

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ElliotNess@reddit

Was her middle class family a god-fearing Christian one? The more evangelical sects were definitely against that satanic indoctrination channel.

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WackyWriter1976@reddit

My mom refused to pay for cable. My dad went along with it. But, a company came through in 1989 that changed her mind, and boom, we had cable.

Prior to that, I only watched MTV when I was at my best friend's house or at my paternal grandmother's. Otherwise, I caught videos on Friday Night Videos, Soul Train, or American Bandstand.

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BubbhaJebus@reddit

Our TV was 100% broadcast TV. My parents didn't have cable. I didn't watch any MTV until I visited a friend's house. But I knew about MTV because of the "I Want My MTV" ad campaign.

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Far-Comfortable3048@reddit

The first thing I did when I got home from school was turn on MTV, I saw every video in their rotation a hundred times at least. I was an only child who was not allowed to take part in extracurriculars like team sports, Girl Scouts, school clubs, etc., so that had a lot to do with me having so much time to dedicate to soaking up every possible second of MTV. My friends who had busy lives were familiar with it, but nowhere near to the degree that I was.

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LicarioSpin@reddit

Nope. I'm with you. MTV like social media now in terms of time suck.

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earthtobobby@reddit

My parents didn’t have cable. I had always had to watch at a friend’s house.

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Capable_Isopod6563@reddit

My husband well. Lol.

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retro_lady@reddit

My family didn't get MTV until around 1987 or '88 and I was glued to it. But before we got it, I still watched music videos a lot. Remember there was a show on Friday or Saturday that showed videos? The name escapes me. I was very young.

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88Gonzo@reddit

Class of '88 here and I didn't have cable in my house growing up.

I DID watch MTV any chance I had at friends homes though, so I was well versed in music videos.

My wife however, same age as me, had cable growing up and I swear she sometimes acts like It was never plugged in.

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Th3R00ST3R@reddit

dune-ga-dune-dune
dune dune digga
dune-ga-dune-dune
don dune dune

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Beetlebug12@reddit

I need Kurt Loder to give me my news again, these people now only tell me things I don't want to know.

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This_Fkn_Guy_@reddit

I could watch tabitha delivering my news all day 😍

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dbldbl@reddit

I felt conflicted when Serena Altschul came on the scene and I was all “Betty or Veronica”?

p.s. Serena’s still reporting under the Paramount Company news with CBS News (Sunday Morning correspondent!)

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This_Fkn_Guy_@reddit

Absolutely

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JimVivJr@reddit

I wasn’t addicted to MTV but it was always on. Like a radio playing in the background when my friends were chillin. I just didn’t sit there watching it at all times. I honestly would’ve called you a liar if you told me you never watched MTV. I never even heard of someone who never at least saw a segment of a video at some point. Of all the channels, I miss MTV the most. I would probably still have it on in my house at all times. Just playing music in my house with music news, concert announcements, and great F’ing interviews. Maybe I was addicted and didn’t know it.

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dibbr@reddit

My Dad made decent money but would never pay for cable. He'd be the Dad on the roof adjusting the antenna. We went to my neighbors for MTV.

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More-Complaint@reddit

Now imagine that the entire world isn't the U. S.

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Self-Comprehensive@reddit

No cable, no MTV.

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dutchoboe@reddit

We never had cable - but miracle of miracles, 12.5 yr old me landed in the hospital for a week in mid March 1985. Hospitals had cable - and a great time to have MTV. That gave me about 4 months to get psyched for Live Aid.

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shutupandevolve@reddit

I remember actually watching when it first aired. Video Killed the Radio Star was the first video. I was a huge music fan. I haven’t watched it in a long time.

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mattbnet@reddit

I only watched MTV at friends' houses, we were late adopters to cable.

But I also thought it was kind of dumb. I like music but the concept of music videos was a hard sell. I came around somewhat but never really got into it much.

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Hoosier_Daddy68@reddit

We were upper middle class but lived outside of town so cable just wasn't an option at the time. I think maybe 3 or 4 years into MTVs run we finally got cable and I could watch but it was never a big thing with me. I knew the VJ's mostly and half assed kept up with it but I just didn't care enough.

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Over-Marionberry-686@reddit

I had cable in the early 80s, and when MTV first came out they had like a pattern on the channel saying watch this channel MTV coming in midnight. And on August 1? I think it was August 1 we got video killed the radio star. Pretty sure the next video was Pat Benatar but after that I don’t remember

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Munchkinbearcat@reddit

By '89 my hometown voted to not allow the cable provider to offer it. Only kids with satellite could watch. I still haven't seen most videos for music I loved back then.

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rhcedar@reddit

I did 8th grade thru high school, 5 years 1986-1991, in a small farm community in Wisconsin. MTV wasn't an available channel until a year or two after I graduated from high school. I missed out on a lot.

Had a cousin give us a video tape of a few hrs worth of videos out of pity.

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Reader47b@reddit

She may not have had MTV. It was a pay channel when it first came out, and then it was bundled into one of the pricier cable packages - it was never in the "basic" cable package. I was in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, but I would guess only 1 in 3 of my friends had MTV at home. I watched it, but only at a friend's house.

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antiaircraftwarning@reddit

My wife remembers her family getting cable, and the moment she turned on MTV, Devo's Whip It video played. They cancelled cable immediately and never went back. Her experience from then was only from friends houses.

Then she married an idiot who fucking loves Devo

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Dphre@reddit

Once we got a cable box it’s all I’d watch when I could get the tv.

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TheEnd0fA11@reddit

My dad worked for Cox Cable. Oh you think cable television is your ally? I was born of it, moulded by it…

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KissesandMartinis@reddit

We had cable, even the pay channels like HBO, etc, but no MTV for some reason. Not that my parents would’ve let me watch it. I didn’t get to watch till much later, like Headbangers Ball was my fave.

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slimninj4@reddit

During the summer is was on during high school

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Viridian_Cranberry68@reddit

I only watched Headbangers Ball and eventually Beavis & Butthead. I couldn't stand it the rest of the time.

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Sawdustwhisperer@reddit

We were poor and lived out in the country - read as ZERO chance of having cable TV!

My first video I ever saw was Hungry Like A Wolf by Duran Duran on Friday Night Videos on one of the 3 channels (ABC, NBC, CBS) while spending the night at my best friends house.

One of my first MTV videos was either Money For Nothing by Dire Straits or Mickey by Toni Basil (I had to look up the spelling -- she's 81!!! Can you believe that?!?!)

But, there's two songs that really made a lasting impression on me and I still love them too this day. Alllll of the hype for MJ's Thriller did not disappoint! Great song, album, and video. Also, I could watch forever is Wicked Game by Chris Issak....beautiful song, gorgeous video!

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Significant-Owl-2980@reddit

Wicked Game….such an amazing song. So hauntingly beautiful.

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cholaw@reddit

My city didn't get cable until I was in college. Even then my mom wouldn't get it or allow us to put it in her house. (I had a job in highschool and got my own phone. When the bill came she found out and had it cancelled. She paid $0 towards the phone) She got cable when she retired and loved it.

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Babsee@reddit

We never had cable until way later. Too many channels already available (ie: cheap parents & grew up in NYC). I lived for “Friday Night Videos”, “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” <—-live playing!!!), & SNL musical guests. When I finally had MTV in my home, it was like a drug that I could never look away from.

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Beneficial_Emu696@reddit

I got in 1986 and watched religiously. For non-music Remote Control was the absolute best, followed by Beavis and Butthead. I also enjoyed MTV2 after MTV became unwatchable. Somewhere around then VH1 got good (it was hard watching for a few years- can only see so much Bruce Hornsby), then it seemed they all became unwatchable.

Maybe I aged out, but maybe it just sucked.

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OolonColluphid042@reddit

I know someone who hasn't seen Star Wars. She's 51.

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Flaky-Artichoke6641@reddit

Solid gold?

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Marlbey@reddit

Yes. And Friday Night Videos.

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Diela1968@reddit

MTV was cable only where I lived and I didn’t get cable till I went to college. However one of the over the air stations had a weekly music video Top Ten countdown so that’s how I got my fix at 13-17

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TheMackD504@reddit

When I was in middle school (98-02 mainly) the tv in my room only caught the local channels and for some reason mtv 2. My tv never changed from that station. I loved mtv growing up in the 90s so it’s definitely weird hearing an 80s kid not knowing of mtv

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stupidassfoot@reddit

MTV was a way of life and rite of passage.

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stupidassfoot@reddit

Psychotic or an alien.

Just kidding 😂. Though, that is really fucking weird.

MTV definitely was an automatic growing up. Even at least general awareness by those that didn't have cable, etc. Where did she grow up?

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Intabih1@reddit

I had three channels and an antenna. No MTV for me until I left home.

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WeirdRip2834@reddit

I owed my mother $5 a month to upgrade the cable channel selection so we could have the MTV. I was in middle school.

Maybe her parents were penny pinchers like mine!

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EdAddict@reddit

I lived poor in the sticks, so no cable or satellite dish for me. I watched a couple of times at a friend’s house , but that’s it.

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Uncle_Brewster@reddit

I grew up in a conservative, rural community that wouldn’t allow the cable company to offer MTV. They of course did offer it after I was long gone, but I missed out on it until I was in college.

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bobniborg1@reddit

MTV had some penetration issues :) Remember the "I want my MTV" ads. That was to get kids to complain to parents and then onto cable places that weren't carrying it as part of their package. Where did she grow up?

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jaxbravesfan@reddit

My parents didn’t get cable until after my younger brother moved out, so my MTV viewing was limited to when I was at friend’s houses who had cable.

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pogulup@reddit

I lived out in the country and the only way to get that would be to get a satellite dish. Not the little ones like you get today but the huge ones that sat out in the middle of your yard. Way, way beyond what my family could afford.

I only saw MTV when I went into town to visit some friends from school. They had a Nintendo (something else I didn't have) or they had 4 wheelers (something else I didn't have). Both options where far more entertaining than watching MTV. I did start watching a bit late '90s/early '00s when I got into college.

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LonelyAndSad49@reddit

Once we had cable, I never watched MTV. I’ve never been much of a music person, so it didn’t hold any appeal for me.

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chicadeaqua@reddit

We never had cable-but I still watched hours and hours of mtv at my friends’ houses.

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pseudoart@reddit

No cable for me. We got a dish sometime in the early 90ies, so I could watch mtv in the living room sometimes. When I moved out in 96, it was amazing to have dozens of new channels.

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8reticus@reddit

From day 1 and also Night Tracks on TBS to change things up once in awhile

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vampyire@reddit

we got a satellite dish February of my senior year in high school.. we went from just ABC/NBC/PBS on broadcast to a ton of stations and MTV was one that I put on (and Canada's "Muchmusic") and always had on.. this was 1984 so prime MTV

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Peacanpiepussycat@reddit

I always watched MTV growing up , I was a latchkey kid and alone a lot . We had cable with all the channels , only cause we had one of those “black boxes “

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airckarc@reddit

When we finally got cable, my parents didn’t include MTV. I watched it some at friends’ and on those weekends when they’d give you free MTV. I did watch something like, “Friday Night Videos” on TBS or another basic cable channel.

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breid7718@reddit

Friday Night Videos was on NBC. Highlight of my jr. high week. Seems like it came on just after the late news.

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Competitive-Cow-4522@reddit

MTV was on from the time I got up until my mom got home from work every damn day.

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Ta_mere6969@reddit

We had basic cable growing up. The 3 networks, PBS, some channels out of LA and Chicago, USA Network.

MTV came on only when the cable company gave customers a free week as a promo.

I watched music videos at a friends' house, usually taped.

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redherringaid@reddit

My parents refused to get cable. I just watched a bunch of videos I hadn't seen before.

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Narrow_Market_7454@reddit

Had a friend who’s quite a bit older brother broke the television and their parents never got another so he missed out also.

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Helpful_Librarian_87@reddit

Yea, my parents didn’t get cable for years. Like, I’d been out of the house then moved back in 8 years later and they’d just gotten cable. So only got to watch mtv at friends houses.

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upnytonc@reddit

We didn’t have cable, until I was an older teenager. I watched the hell out of MTV at friends’ houses!

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supernovaj@reddit

We did not have cable growing up. However, even if we did, we would not have had MTV because the small town I grew up in didn't allow it. Pretty wild!

The first I saw anything on MTV was after I moved to a larger city right after highschool and got cable there.

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SnooEpiphanies157@reddit

MTV was always on. Loved The Young Ones and 120 Minutes

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seaburno@reddit

We lived in a community that definitely had cable - our neighbors on both sides had it. My best friend (2 streets over) had it since the early 80s. But Mom (and to a lesser extent, Dad) thought that things other than TV were more important. So I really only saw MTV at two locations - my best friend's house, and when I babysat my cousin.

My parents first got cable in the summer of 1992 so that they could watch the entirety of the political conventions.

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johnrgrace@reddit

Richie rich with his cable

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Sunhammer01@reddit

Only rich, city folk had cable. All us rural folks still just had the 4 channels, and MTV wasn’t one of them!

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Rare_Tomorrow_Now@reddit

Poor people watchedV Video One on unpaid networks. In my town i think it was channel 9? Or 56?

Oh tea remember when channels were numbered? Not names.

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GrimaceMusically@reddit

My mom (ultra-religious and prone to believing in anything “satanic panic” related) refused to get cable specifically because of MTV. We didn’t get cable in the house till I was 16.

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slightlyused@reddit

My family didn't have cable until after I graduated high school. The only time I saw MTV was at friends homes.

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Gazdatronik@reddit

I had cable and didn't watch MTV. I didn't care for and still don't care for music videos because I like music.

Besides by the time I was of channel choosing age, the grunge era began followed by the alternative scene which were two genres I had no interest in. My cousins would have it on while I was over, I think they only played Black Hole Sun on repeat, at least thats what I gathered from it.

Later on as an adult I found out in the evenings they would play TV shows like Liquid Television and such which I liked a lot.

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Moonglow_sunshine@reddit

My family was super religious. I only got to see it when I stayed at a friends house.

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Green-Eyed-BabyGirl@reddit

I didn’t watch MTV. I think we had cable. I just wasn’t into watching music…I had my own boom box and I listened to music all the time but I was usually doing something else while I listened.

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doomtownpunx@reddit

We didn't have cable growing up.

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Careless-Ability-748@reddit

I rarely watched MTV

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moon_goddess_420@reddit

I didn't have cable so I had to get my MTV fix at everyone else's house!😆

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FloydianSlip5872@reddit

I was living in Anaheim when my. First aired, I remember watching the first video of the buggles. Instantly hooked. I remember always sitting down with a bowl of cereal and turning on MTV everyday after getting home from school before going out to ride my bike while the parents were at work.

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Bearmancartoons@reddit

We didn’t have cable so I only watched at friends

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Edward_the_Dog@reddit

I watched it in the early days when they just showed videos. I can't say I got into it. As an aspiring musician, I thought MTV represented the death of music. I haven't watched a second of it since maybe 1986.

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CommitteeOfOne@reddit

1986 was when MTV finally became available in my town.

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TheJokersChild@reddit

1986 was the year Warner Amex sold MTV to Viacom. That's when many believe the decline began.

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MNPS1603@reddit

We had cable, but only one tv connected to it, my room didn’t have a cable jack so I was using rabbit ears to get local stations! If my parents were home we were watching what they wanted - local news, mash reruns, or designing women. I could watch MTV in the morning waiting for the schoolbus or right after school before they got home. I remember watching Club MTV or something with Downtown Julie Brown most afternoons. There are several songs from late 80’s that when I hear them, I picture the videos, so I’m sure I watched them on mtv. I didn’t get to watch a ton of it until college in the dorms. I remember the first week of freshman year the RA from my floor took us to watch the MTV VMA’s on a girls floor as a mixer. This was the year Michael Jackson kissed Lisa Marie Presley. We watched a lot of Beavis and Butthead freshman year.

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Medical-Hurry-4093@reddit

Not every cable system carried it from day one. Some ran it on 'shared' channels.

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hdhdhgfyfhfhrb@reddit

GF grew up in rural nowhere without cable. I drop music video references from the 80s/90s all the time and she has no idea what i mean.

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Ribbitygirl@reddit

I lived on a street that was just down from a big housing development. They put cable into the development, but not down our street. I guess there weren’t enough houses to make it worthwhile. We never got cable, and although we were middle class, my parents weren’t gonna spring for a satellite dish. I only saw MTV (and Nickelodeon) when I went to friends’ houses.

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lonerstoners@reddit

When we could afford the cable bill, we had it. When we couldn’t, we didn’t.

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JelloButtWiggle@reddit

My parents wouldn’t pay for cable, but luckily I babysat for lots of rich people and my bff had it, so I saw it whenever I got the chance.

I do remember a budget Temu MTV type video show called MV3 that used to be on the local channel for a while. Richard Blade was one of the VJs - he’s now on Sirius XM.

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eris_kallisti@reddit

I am MTV generation first, Gen X second.

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TallGirlzRock@reddit

My parents hated media, esp stuff like MTV. My husband and I have same kind of relationship. I have no clue about 89’s media and even cultural references because of my well meaning idiot parents.

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slippedintherain@reddit

We didn’t have cable in our area outside the city limits so I didn’t see MTV unless I was at a friend’s house in town. I remember there was a music countdown show that came on during the weekend on broadcast tv that showed videos though.

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Skatchbro@reddit

I never got the MTv experience because we didn’t have cable.

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Budget-Rub3434@reddit

We never even had cable. That was for rich kids.

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used2B3chordguitar@reddit

We always lived way out in the sticks and cable companies weren’t pulling cables out to those rural locations. I got my maintenance dose from Friday Night Videos, but I never got deep into MTV.

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ScorpioTix@reddit

Not everyone had cable. We only had it sporadically 1990-1997 and when I moved out I didn't even get a television for almost 2 years. Neighborhoods were still being wired all thru the 1980's. Some cable providers often in Bible Belt areas would not carry MTV such as where my friend lived in Wichita, KS area.

My memory of MTV is wading thru piles of shit for the occasional gem during the day and watching Headbangers Ball or 120 Minutes for only a slightly more favorable gem to shit ratio.

And then there are those who look at MTV as more of a negative impact disruption the way a lot of people look at Spotify even if both brought a moribund music business back to life.

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SouxsieBanshee@reddit

My mom couldn’t stand listening to our generation’s music. She hated it. My dad liked 80s top 40 music. He wasn’t really a fan of MTV but he really liked VH1 so usually had that on when my parents were home. When we were home alone, it was MTV

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_TallOldOne_@reddit

I hardly ever watched any TV when I was young. MTV included. I knew what it was and yeah, I’d seen it since it came with the cable the parents had but I never had time for it.

I still don’t watch much TV.

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afrybreadriot@reddit

I would’ve loved to have cable tv I grew up on a reservation to this day the normal cable companies won’t give us service. We have to go through DIRECTV 😀

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purple_sangria@reddit

We didn’t get cable as far out of town as we lived, but you’d better believe I was over at a friend’s house that did have it for the very first MTV airing!

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Affectionate-Team197@reddit

I would ask her what she did if she wasn’t watching videos. Back then where could we go? Lolol

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Hour_Recognition_923@reddit

So glad i got to watch mtv before it went stupid reality style.

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idanrecyla@reddit

Grew up in Brooklyn NY and we did not have cable in the area until late1996. None of my friends nor I watched MTV. We were aware it was a cultural phenomenon, it was talked about in other shows, in the news, in newspapers, but that was about it. No one I knew in NYC at the time had it. Once mid 80's a friend invited me to a family member of hers in Connecticut, and we sat transfixed watching MTV, we thought it was incredible of course

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MundaneHuckleberry58@reddit

Never had cable. But any friend who did? Dude I was glued in front of mtv whenever I helped myself to their house, which was as often as possible.

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Govinda74@reddit

Man, growing up knowing about MTV and what magic it held from seeing little bits of it at my friends house but not being able to afford cable at home was harder than it should have been lol! We FINNALY got it rolling in like 90-91 I think (?) Just in time for it to go from mostly videos to Liquid Television and all the other trippy stuff that made such a huge mark on my teen years! I hear it still exists as a network but happily have no clue what goes on there anymore

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swarleyknope@reddit

If everyone had it, they wouldn’t have needed those “I want my MTV” commercials 😆

We had it with our cable - the kind with the push button box - but didn’t know about it until our babysitter put it on.

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RealSignificance8877@reddit

Headbangers ball!

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Wyzard_of_Wurdz@reddit

I only watched Metal Shop and Headbanger's Ball.

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CommitteeOfOne@reddit

What's her age and when did MTV become available when she grew up? I can remember when we finally got MTV in the small town I grew up in--late summer of 1986, the year I turned 16.

It had been available for a couple of years before that, but it wasn't on the basic tier of our cable system, and my parents wouldn't pay for it.

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Emilie0711@reddit

We didn’t have cable growing up, so MTV was something I watched at my friends’ houses. I specifically remember staying with a friend while my grandma was in the hospital when the video for Take on Me came on. Sadly my grandma died a few days later, so as much as I loved that song, hearing it also made me cry for the longest time after her death.

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millersixteenth@reddit

I only watched Mtv at friend's houses. At home I watched almost no TV from about 15 on.

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OldChamp69@reddit

Didn't get cable in my area until early 90's. Just never got hooked on it.

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Acceptable_Reality10@reddit

I lived so far out of town we could only get 1 channel of regular tv and up to 2 1/2 when weather was great. So I never watched cable, heard all about it from everyone I knew and occasionally would go somewhere and get to watch a little but never MTV. After I moved out tho I sure as hell did lol.

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grayson_dinojr@reddit

I assumed everyone was like us. Everyone I knew was.

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Ianthin1@reddit

My parents were always pretty hip to whatever music was popular at the time and my sister was a MASSIVE Duran Duran fan, so MTV would be on a lot in our house. I can't imagine what my taste in music would be without it.

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serraangel826@reddit

My grandfather wouldn't pay extra for MTV. One of my most cherished childhood memories is going over my friends house for New Years and eating Chinese food watching MTV. I distinctly remember us looking at each other voicing all the words to the opening of "Thriller".

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Successful-Ruin2997@reddit

We didn’t have cable so that’s a no from me.

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Hungry-Industry-9817@reddit

Mom did not allow us to have cable. I did not see MTV until I visited relatives and then when I got cable on my own in college, by that time the reality shows were starting.

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permaculture_chemist@reddit

I grew up in San Diego and we had the basic cable TV package at the time, including MTV. I usually had it on in the background and I have a faint recollection of watching the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when the OJ Simpson Bronco car chase happened.

My cousins from Arizona would come over for a few weeks each Summer. They didn't have MTV or cable and would spend all day watching it during their visits.

To me, MTV was cool background noise and videos. To them, it was must-see-TV.