I have a video tape from around 1988 or so. It has a 20 minute blank spot. Some of the videos were recorded by my kids and some by me. I think it has around 4 hours of videos on it.

Long gone... Try Youtube

While MTV is not 24 hours of music videos, they do have segments of '80s videos. I like to flip to the station during these times.

But you know, the thrill isn't there anymore. I remember waiting expectantly for the next video and hoping it was one of my favorites. Or to take in a new video. And if you got stuck with something you weren't fond of, you just wait it out for the next one.

Only now in the age of YouTube, there's no reason to wait. If you want a favorite now, you just jump to it. If autoplay takes you to a song you don't like, you can skip it. Sitting in front of the TV waiting for the next video feels so blah now.

Not that I'd want to go back.

By the time MTV was a thing, I was too busy supporting a family on my own to spend much time staring at music videos, so it didn't impact my life. I must say, though, that the re-runs of "WKRP in Cincinnati" being shown on one of the cable channels has been great to see. Probably my favorite sitcom ever.

I’d never had cable tv till recently ...too many years in the woods, and no desire to pay for advertisement via satellite. Consequently, I’d end up at friends houses forgetting why I came … glued to MTV.. Instead, I’d buy about any ‘live concert’ tape or DVD remotely related to Rock, and have concert nights I/ we survived.

Their very first video shown.

MTV was "over" by 1990.
Shame, really. I rather enjoyed it when it first started.

I remember watching bands in 1981 that I had never heard of...it was quite innovative and thrilling back then to have this visual form of music. The interviews of band members were also interesting as well as the documentaries of how bands were becoming social activists with such concerts as Farm Aid, We are the World, etc.

A lot has changed and there are now many outlets for music...musicians who didn't fit the "mold" couldn't get their music out there and now they can...

I haven't watched MTV in years because I thought it turned into more of a "shock stupid video" production rather than a good place for music...but I do appreciate that MTV was a start and the history can be respected.

We ALL want that...and to be 18 again like I was when it first went on the air. How did something that was once so great become an unwatchable tsunami of brain-dead reality show diarrhea?