MTV & Comedy
Guest VJ shows one early area outside where comedy made incursions into MTV. When Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon did theirs in in 1983, they staged a comic bit with Andy Warhol.
The first two editions of Weird Al Yankovic’s Guest VJ specials were four hours long, and each hour started with his own “Top of the Hour” clip parodying MTV’s. This clip includes the very beginning of the broadcast, in which Yankovic appears from his living room, and announces he has successfully pirated MTV’s satellite signal.
This clip from the second installment of "AL TV" in September 1984 includes Al commenting on the Billy Joel video which had just played, as well as parody tour dates for his own tour, using the same graphics as MTV did for various touring artists. Just like other Guest VJs, Weird Al had an album to promote, which he briefly does prior to the fake tour dates
In this clip from Weird Al's second Guest VJ special in 1984, he makes comic comments over the beginning of Prince's "When Doves Cry." In doing so, he is the first to make TV comedy out of music video commentary on MTV—nine years before Beavis & Butthead.
A regular feature of Weird Al Yankovic's Guest VJ takeovers of MTV, titled "AL TV," were parodic interviews which took answers and comments out of context. This one from 1992 features Al interviewing George Harrison. From his first special in 1984, Al parodied various elements of MTV's flow, including the music news, contests, and tour dates. With the expansion of MTV's programming in the early 1990s, Al expanded his parodies, too. Included here is a portion of a parody of House of Style.
The "Rock-n-Wrestling" connection was a partnership between MTV and the WWF that resulted in programming events, as well as news reports covering them. MTV VJs participated in "kayfabe"—professional wrestling's elaborate universe where boundaries between performance and reality blur.
This clip from flow in August 1985 promotes The Young Ones, MTV's first regularly scheduled comedy series, by emphasizing both its Britishness and crudeness.
When MTV aired a Monkees marathon in 1986, it contextualized episodes of the 1960s NBC sitcom within its flow with short clips of various MTV artists discussing the significance of the band for them. Instead of just an old sitcom, the Monkees became appropriate MTV content, and indeed the band experienced a resurgence of popularity among a new audience. Here we can see how commercial segments are buffered by these artist clips, maintaining a sense of MTV flow.
This segment includes two recurrent Remote Control categories: “Beat the Bishop” in which contestants solve a math problem as an actor dressed as a bishop races around the studio, and “Sing Along with Colin” in which contestants attempt to sing the next line following co-host Colin Quinn.
MTV got in early on the trend in standup TV shows, and also used its show Half Hour Comedy Hour to discover new talent, like Jon Stewart. In this segment from December 1989, we can see how the show alternated between stand-up and conversations.
This longer clip of Half Hour Comedy Hour in 1989 features more of Jon Stewart, as well as some choice ads for 1-900 numbers, including one where you can get the latest news out of Compton from N.W.A. Also, some great fashions to be had at New York, New York (the boutique) for Holidays 1989!
Around 1989, MTV experimented with a new kind of programming: "vid-coms." The idea was that these were a combination of music videos with comedy shows. They varied in content, but usually included some sketches and monologues, filled in with music videos. In this segment of flow, the previous programming block, Martha's Greatest Hits (in which newly returned original VJ Martha Quinn introduces old videos, and some new ones), is ending and the vid-com Colin's Manly World begins. In it, Colin laments leaving Remote Control and having his own show, which isn't going so well. Then a video begins. Interestingly, the last video in Martha's show and the first in Colin's are both by John (Cougar) Mellencamp. These shows were a step away from depending on music videos produced by the music industry, and toward MTV's own developed programming content.
Kevin Seal: Sporting Fool featured the VJ venturing out to engage in “sporting” activities such as running with the bulls in Pamplona, or in this case, flying with the Navy’s Blue Angels. Here he takes control of the jet, then introduces a video from Living Colour.
In this clip from The Ben Stiller Show in February 1990, a U2 video is ending, then Stiller continues his Bono impersonation, in a parody video suggesting Bono has a god complex. The episode includes several other segments of Stiller mimicking performers, including Jimmy Buffett and Milli Vanilli.
Before Beavis & Butthead premiered in March 1993, the duo appeared at the 1992 Video Music Awards to assist Eddie Murphy’s delivery of the Best Male Video award. Weird Al’s “Smells Like Nirvana” was nominated, but Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”—a clip taken from MTV’s own Unplugged—was the winner.
What were reruns of Saturday Night Live doing on Music Television? This promo from 1991 drew comparisons between classic components of the old SNL with things that could be seen on MTV.
