It’s MTV’s 30th birthday, so I’ll be reblogging some pertinent posts from around the internets. This one’s from Rolling Stone magazine (an early detractor, I should add; they were scared MTV would usurp their postion in the music business firmament):

MTV Turns 30
Original VJ Mark Goodman recalls network’s first days: “I think we only had 300 videos”

Rolling Stone 
By ANDY GREENE
JULY 28, 2011 4:05 PM ET

For original MTV VJ Mark Goodman, the news that music network is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend is hard to fathom. “It’s freaking weird,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I’ve lived like three lifetimes since then. It’s just so long ago, and yet it also seems like yesterday. It’s a weird number – and it’s hard to believe that we’re still talking about this 30 years down the road.”

MTV launched on August 1st, 1981 at 12:01 a.m. The first images broadcast were the launch of the Apollo 11, followed by a video for the Buggles song “Video Killed The Radio Star.” The network has gone through countless permutations since then, but this weekend VH1 Classic will commemorate MTV’s founding with a three-day marathon of footage from the 1980s, including a re-broadcast of the network’s first hour, starting Saturday at 6 a.m.

Photo by MTV, 1981, left to right: J.J.Jackson, Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter

(Read the entire article here.)

[Click here for my other posts about MTV.]