We want our MTV!

29:19It's one of those at the time where you're like, oh, that's sweet. Now you're like, oh, my God, fire that teacher. Right, there's a lot of 80s and 90s media that's like that. Yeah. One thing I did want to say when you were talking about Devo, like I can say for sure that 10 year old Chuck would not have known about Devo or the talking heads. Right. Or like, do you remember the Art of Noise video? Oh, like the super cool like animation? It was like herky jerky stop motion. Yeah. Like chainsawing mannequins. And what was the name of the song? I don't remember the name of the song, but Art of Noise was the band.

29:55And but like, there's no way I would have known. Like I was listening to Top 40 radio. And then in a couple of years, my brother-in-law would start feeding me Southern Rock and Leonard Skinner and Allman Brothers and stuff like that. And like, there's no way I would have been listening to any artsy stuff like that, because that didn't come along for me until I started listening to alternative music in like the ninth and 10th grade. You know, and I think a lot of people out there would be like, well, no, Chuck, you would have heard Devo on the radio or you would have heard. I doubt it. Maybe talking heads.

30:25Maybe talking heads. Right. The point is, is the reason you heard those on the radio is because of MTV, because when it became clear that if you gave MTV promotional videos for free and they played them. Yeah. You were going to start selling records in that cable operators region. That's just what happened. It became very clear, very quantifiable early on that where MTV played a song and it didn't matter if it was a well-known band or someone you'd never heard of, those records were going to sell in local record stores. And from that point on, MTV was basically, it had its path set out for them.

31:01Yeah. Man, Devo's so good. If your only experience with Devo is the Satisfaction, the Rolling Stones cover or Whippet, both of which are great songs. Yeah. Like, do yourself a favor and just dive in. It's amazing music. I love Devo. And shout out, of course, to Akron, Akron, Akron and Firestone High School. Chuck, we're 30 minutes in and we haven't taken an ad break yet. I thought we took one. No? I don't think so, did we? Let's ask Jerry to rule on this. Jerry? You have not. Okay. All right. Jerry verified. And hopefully we can leave that in there, Jerry's voice. I don't know if she's going to be okay with it or not.

31:41But this one's clearly going to be supersized, so maybe 30 minutes is about right. Okay. So we're going to cut to commercial break right now. Will you play us out with the music stinger? No? Oh, me? I thought you meant Jerry. No, you.

32:05Very nice.

32:22Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that? Or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.

33:01We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.

33:38Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

34:20New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

35:02Okay, Chuck, so one of the things I definitely associate with MTV is Michael Jackson's Thriller. I was into Thriller. I had the red Thriller jacket. My mom made me a white sequin glove for my first communion as a gift. I was super into Michael Jackson. And I loved Thriller so much that my family bought the making of the Thriller video on VHS, and my sister watched it essentially until it broke. So I always associate MTV with Thriller. Anytime I knew it was coming on, I would go watch it. It was awesome. But it turns out, like, Michael Jackson and his record label had to basically fight to get on to MTV, which is mind-boggling to me these days.

35:48Yeah, for sure. This was 1982 when the Landmark album came out. There's a very funny Vincent Price story because Vincent Price, obviously the legendary spooky actor, was in the 13 minute mini movie that accompanied Thriller as the video. And Vincent Price had an option, apparently, to either take a flat fee of like, I don't even know how much it was, 20 grand or something. That's what I was going to say. Or get, yeah, that sounds about right. or get points on the Thriller album. And he clearly opted for the flat fee and would go on to regret that for many years and apparently over the years called Michael Jackson a lot trying to sort of get back that deal, which his calls were never returned.

36:38And I will just let the listener look up the quote, apparently, that came out about Vincent Price when Michael Jackson settled with his alleged victims many years later. I'm not going to say it here, but you can go look it up if you want. Okay. One other thing about that album, too, that was interesting. Billie Jean was on there. No, Beat It was on there. They both were. But Eddie Van Halen played guitar on Beat It, that very famous guitar solo. Oh, yeah. And apparently at the time, Van Halen had no outside work deal with one another. All they could do was focus on Van Halen. and so Eddie Van Halen had the opportunity.

37:18He's like, yeah, I don't think anybody will hear this record. I'm just going to play on this dude's record, and no one will know about it because it will be uncredited, and sure enough, it turns out that Beat It and Thriller became one of the biggest selling albums of all time. Yeah. I mean, well, people sort of like, how could Vincent Price have done that? But Michael Jackson wasn't that level until after Thriller. No. I mean, Off the Wall was out, of course, and he was with the Jackson 5, but no one knew it was going to be one of the best-selling, if not the best-selling albums of all time. Man, poor Vincent Price.

37:49I didn't know that. Yeah, and also, in regards to Thriller, it was a$900 ,000 budget for that video directed by John Landis. And part of the funding came from Josh's parents because they ended up selling, you know, the making of, on VHS like you mentioned, 100 ,000 copies of that in advance. For$29.95, Showtime paid$300 ,000 to see the documentary. Or I'm sorry, just to air the documentary. And MTV paid another quarter of a million dollars for the ultimate right. That's just the documentary. Yeah, yeah. Because the videos were free. Yeah, for the making of Thriller, the documentary. And it was good.

38:29It was like an hour and ten minutes long. I looked it up. Oh, yeah. I watched it. So one of the reasons why Thriller was a big deal is because there weren't a lot of black performers or artists on MTV at the time, so much so that David Bowie very famously called MTV out in an interview on MTV with Mark Goodman. And he basically just said, like, what's what's the deal here? I think is his actually quote is what the holy heck is going on with you guys. And it was it was true. I mean, like, you just couldn't put it any other way. And MTV basically said, well, we play rock, and it's actually rock's fault because they're the ones who exclude black acts by calling them R &B and not rock.

39:13So blame the music industry, not us. And that didn't fly. That wasn't good enough. And there's a guy who's, if there's a hero in this story, it's him. His name is Walter Yetnikoff. I think he was the head of CBS Records at the time. And he said, if you don't start playing these singles, these videos off of Michael Jackson's Thriller album, we're pulling all of CBS Records artists. You're not going to get a single video from any of them. And that was significant because they made up about a quarter of the videos that were playing on MTV at the time. Yeah. And part two of that, and this is for real.

39:47He he said, we will publicly accuse you of racism if you don't start playing these. Yeah. So I think that really hit home. obviously uh they got uh billy jean and um beat it in the rotation fairly heavily at first but uh libya said she found that that didn't last too long i feel like i remember seeing those ad nauseum forever oh really i i remember not seeing them as often as i wanted oh well you also had a sequin white glove on so you might have wanted to hear more than me i don't know yeah that's true I love those songs though and I remember working a commercial job one time with my long time production manager Andrea and it very casually dropped that she was a production coordinator on the Beat It video one time and I was like excuse me?

40:37One of the fun things about doing that stuff in LA is you would always meet people that just worked on these legendary jobs every now and then I was the lighting guy for whatever for Thriller That's cool. Yeah. So by this time, we're talking mid-80s, and MTV is now the place that is making the names of the artists who are making videos for their music, right? Yeah. And the more daring you were, or the more Kip Winger-esque you were, you could make a really big name for yourself. It didn't matter all that much whether your music was particularly good. Sometimes it didn't matter whether your video was even particularly good.

41:17If you could get onto MTV and nail it in just the right way, they would play it a lot and you would sell a lot of records and your career would be made. And it's no overstatement to say that Madonna's career was made. Who else, Chuck? Well, I mean, people that already had good careers were launched into the stratosphere. like people like Billy Joel, who was already a prominent artist. All of a sudden he's putting out some of the buzz bin, like groundbreaking videos like Pressure. And then when he married or was dating at least Christy Brinkley. Oh, yeah, I remember that video. And like the video for Uptown Girl.

41:57And all of a sudden the biggest supermodel on planet Earth was on MTV. It was a big deal. They started the top 20 video countdown in 1984. so all of a sudden that is rivaling American Top 40 on radio as far as like where the kids are going to see the top content. The VMAs, the Video Music Awards, started also in 1984 and had plenty of iconic moments. And very quickly, like music video directors, it became sort of a farm league for people that would go on to be huge, huge movie directors started out in music videos. Or it went the other way too. I saw that William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist in 1983, also directed Laura Brannigan's video for self-control in 1983.

42:46Yeah. You know the one where she lives among the creatures of the night? Uh-huh. She doesn't have the will to try and fight? I remember that. I love Laura Brannigan. That's a great song. It beats the heck out of Gloria, if you ask me. I like Gloria. I mean, I guess you don't have to choose, but I still like self-control more. But yeah, William Friedkin of The Exorcist directed that video. That's true. But far more often, to be fair, it went the other way. And people started out in music videos and went on to be very popular film directors. David Fincher directed Vogue from Madonna, The End of Innocence from Don Henley.

43:24Janie's Got a Gun from Aerosmith, not the Aerosmith videos that featured Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone that were also iconic. He also directed the George Michael Freedom 90 video, which talk about supermodels, like every supermodel under the sun was in that one. I was reading about George Michael's I Want Your Sex video. And I was like, I guarantee that was as controversial as anything was when it came out. And so I went on to our beloved newspapers dot com and looked for some contemporary aneos articles on that. And dude, the stuff that they were saying, like, should videos, should sexy videos be banned?

44:04There are limits to artists' rights and all this just junk, censorship junk that today is like, this is what you guys were amusing yourselves with in the mid to late 80s? And it absolutely was. And if you go back and look at the video, it is objectively sexy. but to ban anything because of this video, it's just mind-bogglingly stupid today in 2025. Yeah, for sure. Another group of directors, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze got their starts. If you want to talk about just sort of groundbreaking videos, Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer in 1986. Yes. It was directed by Stephen R. Johnson, the amazing stop-motion animation with the help of the Brothers Quay and Aardman Animation.

44:52That was a big one. And then, of course, the AHA Take On Me video was a huge, huge breakthrough video. Man, such a great song still. Yeah. Like the kind of song you can listen to on repeat still. I mean, think about how many times you've heard Take On Me. I love the song. It's a really great song still. But yes, that video is amazing. And plus, I mean, it didn't hurt that the lead singer was about as dreamy as a person on MTV could be. Yeah, they're all hot dudes. Yeah, I remember my sister with her hands clasped under her chin, just like staring at the TV whenever that guy came on. We should mention just for Livia, too, because Livia wrote this, and she clearly has a soft spot in her heart for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video.

45:34Yeah, she pointed out that there is a literal version that they sing, like they change the lyrics based on what's going on in the video. It's pretty hilarious. There's some other ones, too, that definitely made MTV because, as we talked about in Saturday morning cartoons, MTV provided a bardic function for American teenagers and eventually teenagers around the world. Like, when you went and watched the Top 20 Countdown, you were seeing, as all of your friends were seeing at the same time, what was cool that week, right? Yeah. Or you talked about, like, have you seen the ZZ Top video? like ZZ Top had a trio of videos called the Eliminator Series for legs, sharp-dressed man, give me all your loving.

46:16And it featured like that super cool like 1930s car or whatever with the ZZ Top keychain. And like their guitar and their bass would spin on the axis. They could just twirl them. You remember that? And they were fuzzy. They were just really cool videos. And I remember just being like, wow, I like these videos a lot because they were super sexy. But I recently read how like essentially a feminist defense of those videos. And they pointed out that the people who were the villains were people who were like sexually harassing the three women in the Eliminator series. and they would always get their comeuppance.

46:58And ZZ Top was always cheering for these three, I guess, muses or angels or whoever who would come out of the blue and save the day. Yeah, angels and fishnet hosts. Exactly. I don't know if there was ever a group that was less likely to be MTV stars than ZZ Top was. They were saying that there was a quote where they were like, you know, we had basically had our run in rock. Not even rock and roll. Texas Blues Band. Exactly. I think this is in like Texas Monthly maybe magazine because, yeah, they're from Texas. And then all of a sudden, because of these videos, because of MTV, they had a brand new career essentially.

47:38And I think Billy Gibbons was the one who was quoted who said, like, we got 16-year-old girls back as fans. Yeah. You know? Like, so, yeah, that's a really great point. They were extremely unlikely. And that demonstrates the power of what MTV could do. If you made a cool video people talked about, you could have a brand new career on your hands. I know you want to shout out Weird Al, somebody that I've never been that into, but I was an MTV kid, so I definitely saw and generally had a laugh with a lot of those videos. They were great. He apparently had 10 specials on MTV over the years called Al TV.

48:15But yeah, that was another one, too. Like you'd be like, have you seen Weird Al's Like a Surgeon video? Or I Lost on Jeopardy? Yeah. And then one other one, too, that was a really big video early on was the video for Fish Heads from Barnes & Barnes. Do you remember that? Yeah, I mean, I don't remember that being a very big song or video at all. I thought it was just noteworthy because it was Bill Paxton. Or was that a big song? I think it was one of those ones that made people go watch MTV because it would come on sometimes. Okay. I don't think it was like a huge hit or anything like that, but it was one of those early videos that drew you to MTV by word of mouth.

48:57Yeah, kind of like MC Scat Cat. That's right. Paul or Abdul. Yep, I remember that. Wait, wait, we're getting nostalgic. We failed. I know, I know. That failed a long time ago. But we do have to mention the Hungry Like the Wolf video from Duran Duran because that was, it certainly wasn't the first, but that was maybe the best example of music video as like a very cinematic, you know, where all of a sudden it was like the band was in a movie. And it was like, it's not like they weren't a big band before, but Hungry Like the Wolf really put them over the top. Yeah, for sure. And just changed the way that people made videos too.

49:40They made them much more, like it was a movie. Yeah, a pretty good one, I thought. Yeah, and a good song, too. Should we take our second break here at Minute 47? Yeah. All right, we'll be right back because there's plenty more to talk about with MTV.

50:10Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.

50:49We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.

51:27Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

52:09New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

52:46So MTV was a pretty big success in the mid-80s, obviously, so much so that Turner Broadcasting, TBS, tried to compete with their cable music channel. I think the country music, I'm sorry, the cable music channel, CMC, started around the same time. There were a lot of imitators. Most of them fizzled out. I think the Turner one was bought out by MTV for about a million bucks. But in 1985, Viacom Inc. bought MTV from Warner, and leadership said, hey, why don't we stop just playing random videos and start sort of bucketing this stuff? and all of a sudden they had thematic shows like 120 Minutes and Headbangers Ball and Yo!

53:31MTV raps and stuff like that. Yeah. Yes. 120 Minutes always has a soft spot in my heart because you had to stay up on Sunday night. It started Sunday night at midnight, so technically it started Monday morning at midnight and ran for 120 minutes till 2 a.m. It's like the worst time slot in the history of time slots, And yet that was the only place you could see like a Susie and the Banshees video or like Jesus and Mary Chain or whoever. Like that's the only place you could see those videos. And it was worth staying up for. Yeah. The great Matt Penfield. Shout out to him as host. Club MTV in 1987 with Downtown Julie Brown.

54:12That was their dance show. Their sort of Soul Train American Bandstand style show. I'd say just go listen to the heavy metal episodes if you want to hear more about Headbangers Ball. Sure. But Yo! MTV Rap started in 1988, and that was like Run DMC had been on, I think in 84 with Rockbox, but Yo! MTV Raps cannot be under or overestimated, I guess, as what a role it played in bringing hip-hop and rap to the mainstream. Yeah, and if you want a new trivia question to replace the Buggles video killed the radio star, Um, the first rap video played on Yoan TV Raps was Shinehead's Chain Gang. Oh, okay.

54:54You remember that one? I don't. Not at all, actually. Do you? Uh, you know the sound of the men working on the chain gang? Yeah, I know that song. He did like a hip-hop version of that. Oh, okay. It's good. Go listen to it. Yeah, uh, they were also, um, famous for banning some of these, uh, and again, you're gonna get more attention by doing something like that. So NWA had some of their stuff banned, Public Enemy. The Great Song, By the Time I Get to Arizona, was banned in 1991. And then also one of my favorite shows was Unplugged. Oh, yeah. It started in 1989 where they had bands in studio, live in concert, doing acoustic numbers of their hits.

55:35And some of the Unplugged albums became just sort of iconic, legendary vinyl LPs for those bands, just because people had never heard them that way before, like Nirvana and Oasis and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was like, I didn't really ever watch MTV Unplugged. I wasn't very aware of it. Now that you said that Nirvana song. Yes, I remember now. Yeah, REM was awesome. And, you know, they had some sort of obvious unplugged stuff like Bob Dylan and Neil Young. But I think it was when the rock bands did it is when it got the most attention and was maybe at its best. For sure. Or Depeche Mode.

56:15So one other thing that was huge, just huge, that started out as just some small thing that they tried was in 1986, Alan Hunter took everybody to Daytona Beach. And they basically just covered Spring Break. And spring break became an annual event on MTV for decades to come. It was just a huge deal. Every spring break was covered and there's just people like doing shots or dancing or whatever, like on the beach playing volleyball. It was just all lame and dumb, but it was exactly the kind of thing you wanted to see if it was like April in northern Ohio. Because it didn't look like that outside in April in northern Ohio.

56:56So, like, it just brought you down to the beach with all these beautiful people. And it was a great experience for sure. And that also kind of gave birth to Beach MTV or MTV Beach House later on, which they would basically just rent a beach house and broadcast from there for the summer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just made summer summer. You know what I'm saying? Like the official kickoff. Yeah. Yeah. Or like even like in the middle of summer, just seeing that in the morning, you know, getting ready to go hang out with friends because school was out. It just it was like a punctuation mark for summer.

57:30It just made it more of a summer to me. Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. MTV News was another non-music show. That's kind of where we're headed in this segment. And it was a very big deal. I remember that they had a very iconic intro, too, with the typewriter spelling out MTV News and that sound that it made. Yeah. Do that louder. You just did it great. Your first try was better. Kurt Loder, though, was a veteran rock journalist, and he was sort of the main face in 1987. But, you know, they also had, like, Chris Connelly, he ended up being the movie guy. He was the MTV News guy for a while. I had many, many crushes via MTV News, like Tabitha Soren and Serena Altshul, and even a little bit of Kennedy.

58:20Yeah, Kennedy. Remember Duffy? Oh, I remember Duffy. She lived in a friend of mine's building in New York in the Greenwich Village in the mid-90s, and I saw her in the elevator once and almost passed out. I'll bet. I think the one who could top them all, though, was Daisy Fuentes. Oh, yeah. I forgot about her. Daisy Fuentes. Daisy Fuentes. So anyway, moving on, there was a game show on MTV for I think just like a year, maybe, called Remote Control. It came on in 1987. And if anyone asks you what MTV's first regular non-music programming was, it was Remote Control. And I loved Remote Control. Me too.

59:03It had to be more than a year because Ken Ober was the host unless they'd just replaced the host mid-year, which I don't remember. Because another crush, Kari Wer, took over for Ken Ober at a certain point. But remote control was very funny and a great game show for people our age. And to me, it was most noteworthy as launching the careers of Colin Quinn, who was the sidekick, and a young Adam Sandler and Dennis Leary got their start there. Yeah, they were both writers. And then Adam Sandler also played some early characters, one of which was Stud Boy. But it was great. It had one of the all time best sets of not just any game show, but any TV show.

59:44It was set in Ken Ober's parents' basement. And it was all about all the questions were about TV and TV history and stuff. It was really wonderful. Like the people, the players played from recliners. recliners. And if I remember correctly, if you were, if you lost you, like the recliner went sailing backwards through the wall. I think so. That was a great show. Yeah. And it's funny. I haven't, I didn't watch any clips, but in my brain, it just popped into my head. The intro was something like, uh, I wasn't like the other kids or something like that. Okay. It was Kenny wasn't like the other kids.

1:00:16Oh, that's it. TV mattered. Nothing, nothing else did. Girl said yes, but he said no. Now he's got his own game show. Do you remember that or did you look that up? I remembered it. I did not look up a word of that. That's so funny, man. I knew there was something there about not being like the other kids. Because, yeah, he just wanted to watch TV. So now he has a game show about TV. House of Style, 1989. A fashion show hosted by Cindy Crawford was huge. As far as comedy goes, it turns out beyond remote control being very funny. they launched like they were sneakily one of the great comedy incubators of the 80s I feel like and 90s yeah yeah into the 90s because the state the great to me the best sketch show of all time was the state oh yeah from 94 to 95 on MTV the Ben Stiller show in 1990 was amazing and very underseen and underrated did you watch that when it was on oh yeah I did not yeah I was into all of that.

1:01:17I went, so that launched Janine Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Judd Apatow, Andy Dick, for better or worse, Ben Stiller, obviously, because before that, he was just Jerry Stiller's kid. Yeah. And this was where he introduced himself to the world, and we have severance thanks to the show, so thanks a lot, MTV. But it also brought together Bob Odenkirk and David Cross with Dino Stamatopoulos, who was also a writer on the show with them, and they went on to make Mr. Show. Now that actually might be my favorite sketch show. I think so too. But I went back so I was like, I haven't seen a second of this show and I found a great sketch with Bob Odenkirk as Charles Manson.

1:02:00Yeah, yeah. But Charles Manson is Lassie. It's like a black and white parody of Lassie but rather than Lassie the dog, it's Charles Manson who's like the family dog but he's just saying crazy stuff and Bob Odenkirk does a perfect Charles Manson. It's so good. And that's where Ben Stiller started doing the Tom Cruise impressions. Yeah, such a good show. Even though I wasn't into it, we have to talk about Totally Pauly. Sure. Pauly's show ran for five years, so it was actually a pretty big hit. The Wheeze. Yeah, The Wheeze. And then one of my favorites, which got, you know, MTV had such good programming for a while there with these other shows.

1:02:39Liquid Television in 1991, 10 years at least before Adult Swim came on, you could be a kid that was watching this crazy weird experimental animation on television. Yeah, liquid television, right? Did you watch Aeon Flux? I loved Aeon Flux. It was mind-blowing. Yeah, if you've never seen Aeon Flux, this is like a decade before Adult Swim came out. And this was not a time, like, there weren't such a thing as cartoons for adults. You had to basically watch heavy metal over and over again. Yeah. Maybe Akira or something like that. this was like a cavalcade a showcase of adult weird bizarre hilarious cartoons and it's actually where Beavis and Butthead got it's start therefore where Mike Judge got his start Aeon Flex was super cool and in addition to just kind of launching some careers it just laid the groundwork and showed that there's a huge appetite for people who are no longer in high school who really love pot maybe acid a little bit and watch TV or willing to stay up late to watch cartoons.

1:03:46This this showed that they were out there. Yeah, I didn't know until today that the animated show Daria was a spinoff of Beavis and Butthead, that Daria was a character briefly on that show until you pointed that out. Yes, she was one of their classmates at high school. Yeah. So Daria was big. We can't you know, we're running so long. We can't like dive into all these. but we have to at least mention shows like Jackass and Cribs. And then the birth of reality TV eventually was stuff like The Osbournes and Jersey Shore and Punk'd. But it all got started in 1992 with The Real World, which, I mean, clearly, I mean, you know, there was a 70s PBS show in American Family, but as far as the teenagers watching stuff, reality TV, I feel like, was birthed with The Real World.

1:04:35Yeah. And you can make a case, my hypothesis is that you can trace pretty much every problem that we have with the world today back to reality TV and ergo back to the real world. That show was really good for a while. I will stand, I stand behind the real world. I don't remember what season I feel like it really jumped the shark. but I know that there are a lot of people that say it was the year that they somebody got in the shower with somebody else and it became really just sort of like people were getting on there just because they knew they could be famous but I feel like it had a more pure intent before that as a kind of a weird social experiment yeah no it wasn't the show itself that was problematic it was the the foundation that it created the legacy it created oh yeah yeah because I mean if you like reality TV great good on you, I'm glad that it's out there for you, but it wrecked TV until the streamers came along.

1:05:35Like, if you liked a written, scripted show, TS for you, because everyone went all in on reality for years and years and years. You had to basically get a subscription to HBO to watch like a decent TV show for a long time because reality TV got so popular and it was so cheap to make. Yeah, for sure. I don't want people to get mad if we don't mention Carson Daly and TRL. This was in the sort of days where I was fading out of MTV, so I wasn't as into it. But Carson Daly did a fine job on Total Request Live, and I'm also a big fan of the great Dave Holmes, who's a really good dude in real life and does some great things these days.

1:06:19Was he on Total Request Live? Yeah. I don't know if he took over for Carson Daly or sort of. pinch hitter sometimes, but I know he was definitely one of the hosts. So a lot of people are like, what's this MTV you're talking about? And there's a good reason for that. And the reason why is because MTV just started to die a thousand deaths by new channels and networks coming on. It would have made a big decision when it went to half-hour shows or non-music shows even, in part because, as was explained later, if you are watching MTV in its original form, you have no control whatsoever on what's going to come up next.

1:07:04And I remember doing this quite clearly. You'd be watching a perfectly good winger video, and then all of a sudden comes, I don't know, some terrible video. I'm not going to call it anybody's favorite artist. And you would just immediately turn the channel because you knew you could turn back in three minutes and see what else was next. And they just got bled by that. And they found that half-hour shows kept you in longer. And if those shows weren't made up of music videos, but an actual narrative over the course of a half an hour, they lost less and less viewers. And so it just became sensible for them to get away from music.

1:07:40But fear not, because they said, if you still want music videos, don't worry. We will have you covered for the rest of your life with MTV2. that's right uh mtv2 launched in 1996 it was like hey it's just gonna be music videos we we pinky swear trust us uh less than 10 years later it was mostly reality shows and not music videos uh youtube really sealed the fate because you could just watch any music video ever by just typing it in your uh search bar on youtube like dharma style yeah and uh Yeah, I mean, I watch music videos. There's still a show. I can't remember what it's called that I see on Hulu that just runs music video.

1:08:22So I'll put that on sometimes if I'm like folding laundry. Okay. For nostalgia, it's kind of nice. If you go on MTV, it's still around. I believe MTV2 is still around too. There is a 98.75 % chance that you will find an episode of Ridiculousness playing. Yeah. It carries MTV almost single-handedly. It's a show where they just basically put together hilarious clips. It's like America's Funniest Home Videos for nihilists and skateboarders, basically, right? Yeah. And it's a good little show. You remember our friend Hampton Yount, who was in one of our variety shows in L.A.? That's the only reason I know about ridiculousness.

1:09:07Yep. He was one of the writers on Ridiculousness. It's a cute little show. But it has propped up MTV so much that it's been on for 14 years, since 2011, yet somehow it is in season 45. Wow. That's how many episodes they crank out to keep MTV going. So hats off to Rob Dreideck. It's the house hunters of MTV. Yeah, essentially, for sure. Well, before we leave, I do want to quickly kind of mention the MTV contests. If you were a kid in the 80s, they had these crazy, crazy contests that you could enter. And they always seemed to kind of want to one up the last as far as what they would do. And they were, I mean, it was like, you know, you can win Bon Jovi's childhood home.

1:09:54You can win a pink house from John Mellencamp or John Cougar at the time in his small town or whatever. But they were crazy. There was one very famous story of the party with Van Halen for two days. and this was in 1984, and this, I was about to say poor guy, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to him. This guy named Kurt Jeffries has a legendary story of, basically, like, they took it seriously. They weren't like, hey, let's just kind of get this kid in here and whatever, sign something. Like, they partied with him. They got him drunk and gave him cocaine and got a groupie to have sex with him in a bathroom.

1:10:33And, like, he did the whole rock star thing. Van Halen was very intent, like apparently he woke up on day two and was like, I can't, I've got to go home. And Alex Van Halen was like shoving a beer in his face and was like, you've got to do this, dude. He said, you can't leave the spot until you drink that beer. And it was a tall boy. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say after you rattled all that off that that was just day one. Yeah, that was day one. That was a day two. And this was a sponsored contest by MTV. Yeah, there's no way you could do that stuff these days, obviously. But they had a bunch of those, like, you know, party with the band.

1:11:10I know that the police had a sort of a disaster of a contest where they were supposed to fly on their private jet with the band. And I think that went all pear-shaped. I remember very clearly Madonna had a contest that you at home could make the video for True Blue. And I just remember seeing, like, bad homemade video after bad homemade video of True Blue over and over and over again just so I could vote via phone. yeah, the contest. Those are a lot of fun. They're a lot more kind of fun ones. There's a kind of a cool page six article that covers some of the wackier contests they had. Yeah, it's definitely worth reading.

1:11:47Thanks for sending that to me. Ooh, Chuck, you got anything else? No, I mean, we missed a ton, so it's just kind of one of those episodes. We tried to stuff as much as we could in here. Yep, and keep an ear out for VH1, which should be following this one right after, right? Yeah. I say we skip listener mail even. It's been so long. And just say, go with God. Go watch some music videos. Yeah, everybody's tired. Take the day off, everybody. Exactly. If you want to send us an email, you can. Send it off to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

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