Original subtitles

[tires screeching]

Downloaded from YTS.MX

[film projector running]

- There were two problems with MTV.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

Problem one was,

they were only on cable.

And in Boston, cable penetration was only 30, 35%.

Problem two was, I thought they sucked.

They were horrible.

They were in this little tiny set in New York.

They play a video, they play a video,

then they go to the VJ sitting there,

"Well, that was Duran Duran and [mumbling],

"and coming up now we're gonna see something else."

And we'll go to something else.

It was so boring.

There was nothing to it.

But the excitement was having the lifestyle

of music and contemporary music,

contemporary lifestyle on the TV.

So that part of it I saw could be working.

Then I thought, you could really do something with this

and get people involved.

You can get the culture of the community involved,

culture of the music industry and just... lifestyle.

["No Place Like Home" by the Neighborhoods playing]

♪ Mom and Dad are so frightening

♪ Every day is a crisis

♪ Dad comes home and he's nervous

♪ The air so thick you can't breath

♪ Don't let them get to you

♪ There's not much you can do

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through...

♪

♪ Life's not easy as a weakling

♪ Always taking a beating

♪ My best friend is my Hi-Fi

♪ At 33 and 45

♪ When you get home from school run for your lonely room

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through

♪

♪ First grade straight As

♪ I was a good boy

♪ Grade six, grades slipped

♪ I was losing interest

♪ Fun time, grade nine

♪ Fools for friends and cheap highs

♪ Grade 12, expelled

♪ Never learned my lesson

♪ Mom and Dad are frightening

♪ Every day is a crisis

♪ Dad comes home and he's nervous

♪ Air's so thick you can't breathe

♪ Don't let it get to you

♪ There's not much you can do

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through

♪ And little boy I know what you're going through

♪ Life's no fun

♪ Let's pretend

♪ Life's no fun

♪ Let's pretend

♪ Life's no fun

♪ Let's pretend

♪ Life's no fun

♪

[song ends]

[intermittent television static]

- UHF channel 66 will be broadcasting music videos

to all of southern New England.

- A new UHF, non-cable, free 24-hour music video service,

s forerunner of localized music video stations

spreading around the country.

- [Reporter] New England is getting its taste

of a whole new entertainment medium.

The techno age of video is changing the shape

of broadcasting.

- [Narrator] V66, the beat goes on.

[static]

- I made some great decisions when I was a kid

because I followed my heart.

I think I learned it from my mother, who'd say to me,

"If you do what you believe in, you won't fail."

I was kind of a, you know, techno geek back then.

When I was 12 or 13, I built a little radio station

in my bedroom.

I hooked an antenna up and you could hear it

all around my neighborhood.

And I really liked that.

I really got fascinated with radio.

And I thought radio was exciting.

It was a community.

It was a bonding experience

where lots and lots of people are sharing

this common experience together.

It was about that time I walked

into Weston High School one morning.

And went down to my locker and someone said,

"Hey, Arnie Ginsburg mentioned Weston High School

on his radio show last night."

And I said, "Who is Arnie Ginsburg?"

- I went on the air in 1956 as a rock and roll disc jockey.

And prior to that I was an engineer.

I got a lot of licenses with stations around New England.

- Well, I was always fascinated by radio

because radio is hot, happening, very social.

It was interacting really strongly with people,

much more directly than TV at the time.

- And I just went on the air 'cause somebody said,

"Hey Arnie, you wanna do a radio show?"

I said, "Okay."

And everybody thought radio was dying

'cause television was gonna knock radio out of business.

And that was 1956.

God, that was 30 years ago.

So I went on the air as a joke

and it caught on instantly.

- First time I was ever on the radio

when I was 15 years old,

I was a guest from Weston High School

on Arnie Ginsburg's radio show.

- Well my show was called the Night Train.

- ♪ Get around, everybody

♪ We are about to hear

♪ The show that's gonna make you

♪ Smile from ear to ear, it's Arnie Ginsburg

[honking]

♪ On the Night Train show

- The Beatles were in the Boston Garden

and I was one of the emcees there.

There I am in the front row.

In this picture, I'm smiling.

But the one on the "Globe" I wasn't smiling

and it said, "Unidentified man on the right

seems unimpressed by it all."

- But I decided I wanted to get a job in radio,

so I got in my car and told my parents

I wanted to take a day off from school.

But I stumbled into this radio station in Milford

and then this guy named Charlie was the program director.

He happened to come out while I was talking

to the receptionist and I said,

"Hi, I'm looking for some part-time work."

He said, "Oh, come on in."

So I'm in the studio with him while he's doing the show

and he said, "Could you read the news?"

I said, "Oh sure, I'm in the announcers club

at Weston High School."

I'm a little bit nervous

and I came up and I read the news.

That was that and said okay,

he said, "We'll hire you to be on the air

on Saturday and Sunday."

After working in Milford, I got a call

from the program director

of a radio station in Worcester called WORC.

This is what... this changed my life.

There couldn't have been a better radio station

on this planet for me to have gotten into

and been hired at.

Because they epitomized what I loved about radio,

which was the community.

I remember getting in my car,

turning on the radio, and looking for WORC.

And I'm going up and down the dial.

And the first thing I hear is this crazy song.

[knocks on table]

♪ Don't knock, don't phone.

♪ Come on in and make yourself at home.

♪ It's always open house at our house.

It was this funky jingle with a piano.

I thought, "What kind of station is this?"

Then these guys came on and they're yelling back and forth

and, oh, "Call up.

"The phone lines are open.

"We're only gonna play songs you tell us to play

and this is your radio station."

That is what has guided me my whole life.

I saw the success.

I saw not a little success-- the runaway success.

And it is that energy, that community,

and that excitement that gets people involved.

I ended up in Albany, New York,

at this big 50,000 watt station called WPTR.

The thing I hated about my job

was working for a program director

who was trying to create the same kind of radio station

that I knew was not the best that they could be.

So I should have my own radio station.

I started doing a search for a frequency.

I found this frequency for a new radio station

that could be put into suburban Boston.

1060 AM, beautiful dial position.

So I called a guy who had been one of the original hosts

of Open House Party named Mel Miller.

Mel Miller this time was the program director of WMEX.

And I said, "Hey Mel,"

I said, "I'd like to come to Boston

because I want to put this radio station together."

I said, "Do you have any openings?

He said, "Yeah." So I got hired.

So I quit my job at WPTR in Albany.

Moved home to Boston, which was really exciting.

And I went on the All Night show.

And all night I did that and all day I went around

putting my radio station together.

It took eight years of government crap

to finally get the license.

And we put it on the air in 1972,

it was very successful.

♪

And by 1975 I was bored again.

I thought, "Well, what else is there?"

So I've been studying the FCC rules

and I found there was a television channel

that had been allocated to the city of Worcester

that no one had ever applied for.

It was channel 66.

There was also a rule that they've since gotten rid of

that said if there's a channel assigned to a city,

you can apply to have that channel assigned

to any city within 15 miles.

So I got a compass out, I put it on the Worcester Post Office,

and there's Marlborough, Massachusetts.

And Marlborough was 13.6 miles from Worcester.

And what's significant about that is

that Marlborough was in Middlesex County,

which is the largest county in Massachusetts in population.

So suddenly we had a place to put the television station

which could make it a Boston station

instead of a Worcester station.

- I'm not even sure when he was first getting the license

and first putting it on the air

he was sure what he was gonna do with it.

It wasn't always gonna be a music video station.

I can remember actually going to conventions,

weekend programming conventions with him,

and trying to decide whether it was gonna be

the game show channel or, you know, TV shows

or what kind of programming he was gonna put on it.

- He said he'd like to put it on...

you know, "I wanna do something with it.

Are you interested in getting involved?"

- One of the problems in building

this television station, putting the business plan together,

was getting programming.

The last thing I wanted to do was work

at a TV station with reruns,

just more of the same old thing.

But from a radio background, I saw all the potential

that television really had to do more

than just be a place that has reruns and old movies.

There was no programming available.

There were no network affiliations available.

There was no syndicated programming to buy.

Every station in Boston had bought everything on market.

There were no film packages to buy.

There was nothing.

There was no programming available

to put on this television station.

So that means you had to create your own programming.

[pages flipping]

- Video started as record company advertisements

before MTV and V66

and all of that, and that's basically what they were.

There was no market for them other than to sell records.

But they became so popular and there were so many

that MTV started and V66 started.

- So what do you put on a three million watt

television station in the nation's

fifth largest television market?

[rock music]

♪

- It was really great to watch music 24 hours a day

and visualize the songs and see a story put to it

or just see unrelated images put to it.

And it was also the first time they introduce

this very fast editing,

which now is, you know, gets faster and faster

and we're all, you know...

all have ADD because we're doing something on our Blackberry

and looking at this and listening to that.

But I think MTV actually was the beginning

of that chop chop chop, you know,

chopping up your attention span.

- Well, I thought it was very unique.

Obviously no one had ever seen anything like it before.

- It was like when FM started.

It was a whole new way of listening to music.

And this was a whole... video thing was a whole new way

to incorporate music and see your favorite artists.

- MTV was on at the time or had just been on

for a little while.

But they weren't local and they weren't live.

- You know, here in Boston, the two things people talk about

most are sports and weather.

MTV can't do that, channel 66 can.

- When you think of the audacity of starting

a television station and putting something

on the air that's already being done in New York,

and done with a much larger budget and whatever,

I mean that takes some sack.

You gotta really believe in yourself

and got some dough and whatever.

- That's where the idea came from for V66.

It was MTV inspired.

But not because MTV was great

and we were trying to duplicate it.

MTV sucked, we thought we could do it much better.

And I think we did succeed.

♪

- Kidder was a medium-sized investment bank

that was probably 100 years old at the time.

John and Arnie came in in 1983, '84.

- Executives at Kidder-Peabody had gone to college in Boston

and listened to me on the radio.

- But the idea was take John's experience

'cause I think John had owned a radio station on the Cape,

built it and then sold it.

Arnie's experience as a DJ, a legendary DJ

in the Boston market, take a construction permit,

build a station, have it 100% music videos,

grow it over the three- to five-year period,

and sell it for a nice profit.

- MTV being hot and sexy is what helped sell it.

- The biggest single operating expense

for all TV stations is programming.

But video music programming costs are comparatively modest.

♪

- It was a guy named David Hunter who was

the sales manager at Kidder-Peabody.

We went on a road trip around, all over the country

to the major cities, probably 25 cities, Arnie and I did,

to do the presentation of V66 to the investment bankers

who would sell the investors on buying shares.

I think it was $75,000 a share.

We had to raise $10.5 million to build the TV station.

And you know it wasn't our money,

it was their money.

So they underwrote the deal and they said,

"We'll get this done."

And I remember him saying to these groups

that 30 years ago we were telling you

to invest in steel mills and railroads.

They all went bankrupt.

This is the new technology.

And of course on the issue of the programming

music video locally, the top ten songs in Dallas or Detroit

are not the top ten songs here in Boston.

Our music will be tailored to Boston's taste.

The station was licensed to the city of Marlborough.

Marlborough is not particularly easy to get to from Boston.

Framingham is sort of the center.

It's the center of a community.

It's well known, it's a crossroads of important roads

and it's very easy to get to.

It's 20 minutes from downtown Boston.

So we said, "Where can we put this

"and still satisfy the FCC requirements

of the main studio?"

It would have been great to put it in downtown Boston.

But in 1984, the rules did not permit that.

We picked this brand new building that was being built,

really cutting-edge architecture.

And we spared no expense in making a place,

you know, with a decent budget,

that really could be impressive to advertisers.

- The way John and Arnie found out about me

was because I produced a program in Atlanta

called the Atlanta Rock Review.

- And he really understood the medium.

He understood how to do it, how to produce it,

how to make it look good.

- I got this call and the person on the other end

of the phone said, "This is Arnie Ginsburg, Cruisin' 61,

and we'd like to talk to you about possibly

becoming the director of programming at V66.

- I started actually in radio.

I was a music director of a top 40 radio station

here in New York City called 99X.

And we were a very pioneering station.

- Roxy was totally influential.

She was the best music director anybody could have.

- When I got the phone call, I was just a...

A, very thrilled that he would even consider me

for that job.

And, B, excited about an opportunity

to do something that no one had ever really done before,

which was new and unique.

It wouldn't be like MTV.

It would be better than MTV.

And I said, "Sign me up, I'm ready, I'm there."

- [Narrator] In stereo.

- So you had the rock community based around WBCN.

You have the former disco, now pop community

now based around Kiss 108.

And having had those experiences come together

with Arnie and myself,

understanding how they worked.

- One of the very first things I did

was put an ad in broadcasting magazine

and in radio and records asking if somebody

wanted to be a VJ in Boston.

- Well, I had been doing some TV on the Cape.

I was doing the weather on a cable station

down on the Cape.

I could feel that this was going to be

a big step for me in a totally new direction,

just the experience of auditioning.

- We thought he'd be nice to wake up to.

People wanna wake up to somebody who's not too jarring.

- He had that wonderful curly hair.

I just knew what that was gonna do

to the housewives watching in the morning.

- I was doing a couple of things in New York--

as I said, the soap opera "One Life to Live"

and on WRTV they had a video show.

I hosted that for four weeks.

And so I had a nice little package to send.

I was getting a little bit bored with radio broadcasting.

I wanted to do the next thing, the next step.

- Perry Stone stood out.

Perry Stone was just a complete whack job.

- The reason why they wanted to turn and watch us

in prime time was because they never were sure

what Perry Stone was going to do.

- I took a publicity picture that I had

from being in rock radio,

which was an intriguing picture.

So I knew that if they looked at the photo,

they would definitely look at the tape.

And I arrived at a place called Bizwiz

at about 7:00 that night.

And I was supposed to be there at 2:00 in the afternoon.

I thought, "This is a great first impression."

And I went flying into the place.

And everybody's just sitting there calmly.

I was like [panting], "I'm looking for David Beadle.

"I'm here for an audition.

Is he still here?"

- I loved Mary Jo.

And so did the audience.

She was every guy's idea of the girl next door

and a lot of parent's idea of the girl next door.

- Auditioned and interviewed and auditioned and interviewed.

He says, "Eh, we'll give you a call in about two weeks."

Six weeks went by and, "Oh, I know I didn't get the job."

- He was very nervous during the audition.

And he felt so bad about it that he went home,

got a video camera and did another audition

and had it on my desk the next morning.

- David was one of our two most popular VJs ever,

he and Mary Jo.

Unquestionably, they were.

- After a little while, they called back and said,

"We'd love to have you on board."

I was thrilled. I mean thrilled.

- But she says she would have done "Bad Girls" anyway.

We had not been able to find...

You know, we had standards as to who you hired

with on-air hosts.

And we had everybody.

Except we didn't have anybody for middays.

So as a fill-in thing,

and also because I'm kind of a ham,

I said, "Well, I'll do it."

- When you picture a television station

presenting a program, you picture cameramen

and stage managers and technicians

and lighting specialists and producers and directors

and an entire busload of people

that are necessary to make a television show happen.

V66 was set up in such a way

that the VJ could literally run the station by himself.

- We thought it was important to humanize the presentation.

And we thought that would be a...

first of all, budgetarily it saves a lot of money

to have a DJ on camera pushing buttons

and kind of making things happen.

It gives kind of like an interesting...

a little more interest to the viewer.

The other was the technology was now making it possible

to do that.

Remember, Arnie and I come from radio

where people running their own controls is the norm.

- You had to go through excruciating training

on how to operate your own equipment, your own camera,

how to do zooms, how to do fades,

how to do makeup.

I mean, it was literally a few months of training

to do all these things.

- When you come from the culture of radio,

there's not a person in radio

who can't do almost everything.

- Probably didn't realize it at the time

but it was a great learning ground for what I do now.

- At this time in Boston, the Cars,

Aerosmith, J. Geils.

Everybody, everything you heard on the radio,

every fourth or fifth song was a Boston band.

And, you know, it was a vibe.

It was, I don't know, something about that place,

that time that made it super special.

- Boston is different from other cities.

Boston has more venues.

Boston has more radio stations

that are receptive to bands they never heard of.

- For a town that didn't have

any real, like, label or studio presence,

there was really a ton of bands

and a ton of recording studios.

- You know, Boston was really kind of being looked at

as the hot scene at that time.

- A lot of bands, you know, were really pushing envelopes

and taking risks.

- Back then, man, you would go see bands

four or five nights a week, you know?

It was people really, really passionate about it.

And you had your clubs and so you're friends with this guy

in this band, and if you were friends with him

then you went to go see all the bands

that they were friends with too.

- If you're gonna launch a television station like this,

Boston is a great market

because there were so many bands coming out.

- We felt very strongly about the, you know,

catering to our viewers and making sure that they were

turned on to music that was a part of Boston.

- Boston had a rich, rich, music scene and culture.

But in the shadow of that, you had all

these cutting edge bands that were coming out.

And we were very lucky to be in Boston

where we could exploit that.

- The night before we're gonna go on the air

is February 11th.

And John and Arnie and I go out to dinner

about whether we can go on the air the next day.

And I didn't know until that meeting

that Arnie had already set up so that Channel Four

was gonna do a live shot at 5:30 in the afternoon

from the station and we better be on the air.

So John says, "Well, why don't we go on the air

in the afternoon so we have the morning to get ready?"

And I said, "The heck with that.

"Let's just go on the air at 6:00 a.m.

We need all the practice we can get."

That first day on the air was insane.

I got to the station at 5:00 in the morning,

one hour before air time, only to find out

that the transmitter was not yet ready

for going on the air.

They called us up at 5:40 in the morning

from the transmitter site and said, "We can't hear you.

Would you please play a video tape

so we can see if it'll work?"

And we played Glenn Frey's "The Heat is On."

♪ The heat is...

♪ On

[zapping]

- [Narrator] V66, the beat goes on.

♪

- Yay!

We're on television.

Good morning.

This is the new V66 and I'm Bill Stevens.

And you're witnessing television history.

This is Boston's first music video station

in stereo 24 hours a day.

- This was around the time of Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

It had come out, you know, plus or minus in that timeframe.

And so the whole world of music videos was pretty exciting

at the time.

And we were all excited.

We all thought that this was gonna be...

well, we all knew it was gonna be very exciting opportunity.

- First of all, this is music video WVJB-TV,

which means we are a commercial television station.

Everybody can pick us up.

We're not cable.

Which means you don't have to spend any extra money

to be here every day, which is great.

At the end of your shift, you didn't wanna go home.

I mean I would get off the air at 10:00,

I'd stay there until 3:00 in the afternoon.

I just wanted to be there.

- I mean, my main memory was of John

laughing in the studio, pressing the wrong button

or maybe, ooh, dead air, [laughing].

It was just... it was just a funny day.

- It was a magical moment when they first went on.

- V66 is New England's music video station.

Stay tuned and make it yours.

- It was also a time when entrepreneurship,

launching brand new things, was happening.

"USA Today" would be a national newspaper.

You'd see it launched.

MTV had been launched not too long previous.

So the idea of a local channel

that you could play music videos on

was really embraced.

It was a really big deal at the time.

- Whoa, how's that for music video, rock fans?

We know what you need and you can only see it here

all day, all night, live on Dave TV!

- I just know that they were doing something

that was really a groundbreaking idea.

So it was just so new you just didn't know

where it was gonna go.

- Biggest thrill was getting the station on the air

and then within 60 days,

seeing an explosion of enthusiasm

and positive reception for the station.

'Cause the station just blew its way right into Boston

and everybody loved it.

- As I'm flipping the dial like I normally do

just to randomly see what's going on, I suddenly

come across another music station that is not MTV.

- I'm thinking, music video?

And I don't have to pay for it?

- It had a huge impact because in my town

we hadn't had MTV just yet.

- V66, real in Reading.

- Powerful in Peabody.

- V66, easy in Everett.

- V66, charming in Chelsea.

- V66, cool in Cambridge.

- What keeps a viewer compelled

is they don't want to see the same old thing.

So, you know, if we could have made that salad

with enough ingredients, people would keep

coming back for more.

- I mean, who likes just one thing?

Who only likes one kind of music?

If a song is great, it's a great song.

- Because it was video and you can get to see the artist

and specially with some of the metal stuff--

the Motley Crue videos-- they were hysterical.

♪ Smoking in the boys room [phone ringing]

- Wow, man, like, it's for you.

- Come up my way!

- And so it's like, "Oh, I can listen to some Motley Crue.

This video is really funny."

You know, or whatever, the videos were sort of an entree

to turning you on to that style of music

whether it was metal, whether it was rap.

You know, dance stuff, it's easy to watch the video

and then suddenly guess what, you're singing the song.

- Back then, if you were gonna put an urban song

next to a rock song, people would scream bloody murder--

"What are you doing?"

But because you had a visual to it,

I think it made it a little bit more palatable for audiences.

- V66 celebrates 66 days on the air

with a big free party Tuesday night, April 23,

at the Metro in Boston.

It's our way of saying thanks for making V66

a rising success!

- If you could probably pick one band

that represented V66, it would probably be the Cars.

'Cause it was Boston, it was rock,

and it was happening.

["You Might Think" by the Cars playing]

- Incredible band, very cutting edge.

- Sometimes the video gets so ingrained

that it's hard not to think of it when you hear the song.

♪ All I want is you

- But I remember one day,

Elliot Easton from the Cars showed up

and he had a new Jaguar that he wanted to show to everybody.

So he came up with a brand new green Jaguar,

brought us all outside and drove us

around the lot there outside the building in Natick.

It came back to my friends the next day

and I was like, "You won't believe what happened.

Elliot Easton drove me around in his Jag."

- I couldn't get MTV for a long time.

But I could get V66. [laughing]

- They'd done a really good job in the beginning

of getting PR and getting awareness for the channel

as it was going on because it was a new television station.

- One of the things that we recognized

is get our logo out there.

So bumper stickers are perfect.

I think we had two million bumper stickers.

- [Narrator] Own the road this spring with a Boston classic.

The original V66 bumper sticker.

Essential, roadworthy.

- You couldn't drive any major street

without seeing a car eventually with a V66 sticker.

- But I want one for my personal vehicle.

- And then we ordered a couple million more

once those were gone.

- [Narrator] V66 premieres a new music video

each weekday at 4:10.

Don't miss it.

You help decide the fate of the video

later that same night.

Music video premieres, every weekday at 4:10

on the new V66.

- We turned the programming of the music

over to the listener.

We didn't leave it to record sales

or any of those phony baloney measures of popularity.

- [Narrator] The V66 video test weekdays with David O'Leary.

You'll preview a brand new video.

Next, call the V66 V line at 931-1066

and rate it from one to ten.

- It could be a video by the Cars

or Michael Jackson or David Lee Roth,

or it could be some local band.

It's almost like putting that local band

on the same playing field as Bruce Springsteen

or Hall and Oates or some of these major national acts,

but it was always cool.

- We wanted to have video battles

so that we could get the audience to participate.

We wanted the audience to feel

like they were part of the station because they were.

Not only did we have request lines

but we had the video battles.

We had the tests.

- You always had to try to make sure

that people weren't stuffing the ballot box

by calling, "Give it a ten, give it a ten."

The "American Idol" thing where, you know,

people just vote and vote and vote.

- Till Tuesday, a Boston band that won the WBCN

Rock and Roll Rumble a couple years ago,

they were just signed to Epic Records.

And they have a brand new video.

- And V66 helped us to really work into that whole scene.

- There really is a thing that you call star power.

Like Aimee has a lot of that.

It was just like, "Nobody's gonna tell me

what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do, you know, what I want."

- Aimee Mann and Til Tuesday coming to Metro

on Thursday the 16th.

- You have Aimee Mann, this beautiful blonde woman

in this dramatic relationship with a guy

who's abusive and beats her up.

So it's about something that's very contemporary.

It was a brand new issue in 1985.

- It was great to see V66 sort of launch them

and help sort of launch them and make them big nationally.

- Roxy brought it to us and we said,

"Let's put it in right away."

And it went number on in requests.

- And they actually thanked V66 and let them put

the gold album in their lobby.

- I mean, there was the local angle

'cause it was a local band.

But also that they shot the video locally

and you can see the brownstones on Commonwealth Avenue

that were in a couple of scenes of the video.

And it really was, it was like a success story.

- Oh back we go again with more great videos.

- He wanted the station to be hip.

He wanted it to have street feel.

He wanted to have an edge that matched

the lightning bolt that goes through the logo.

And so my job was to give that station

a feeling that it was in touch with the Boston market.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] V66, the beat of Boston.

- Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg and John Garabedian

were radio legends.

When V66 was announced,

it was announced with much fanfare,

largely because of the cache value of these two guys.

And I don't know anything about the financial side

but I understood they got investors,

they got a television station.

Even then, and especially even now,

that's not easy to do.

- You know to this day I think John is just

one of the most talented people ever in my industry.

- I was below the ladder.

He still took the time when he did see to walk up

and say hello and ask how everything was going,

which says a lot about his character.

- And John was very good at motivating people

to go beyond thinking...

he wanted people to think outside the box.

Okay, yes, we are limited but we can.

- John always like to be laughing

is pretty much how I saw it.

And even when things weren't going well,

John always had a joke to make.

[mumbling]

- As we all go through life,

we are all hit all the time

with issues, problems and drama.

And most people, I think, don't handle drama well.

They get all-- ah!

And it's like screw it, you gotta learn to say screw it

early in life.

[rock music]

- [Narrator] Hear and see Boston's best music video

only here on the new V66.

- So we're very fortunate that...

there's a great wealth of music here.

The bands are active and creative

and submitting music videos every week.

- I mean, we weren't shooting a lot of videos

on behalf of bands, but we would do what we could

to encourage them to find somebody to shoot your video

at Emerson or wherever.

And we'll put it on the air.

♪

- John Garabedian told me, he said,

"We did everything in our power

to make this band happen."

He said he made sure that we were in heavy rotation.

John personally talked about throwing a life preserver.

- You could be in a rotation with national

and international acts as a local band

and everybody and their brother was watching V66.

So V66 was like a shot in the arm for anybody

who had a video on there.

- This is Three Colors on V66.

- But it became apparent that this was a,

you know, an opportunity for bands to get their,

get to be heard locally and outside

of the metropolitan area.

- Boston's own Lizzie Borden and the Axes

made V66 video battle history

by being the first band to win 12 consecutive nights.

Number 23, "Out of Touch."

- They played two videos and people would call in

and say which one they liked better.

And it was like battle of the band videos.

And we won 12 times in a row.

Not just against other local bands.

We beat out, like, David Bowie's video.

♪ Down...

- We were overjoyed because once again

this was back in the days when there was no internet,

no YouTube, nothing like that.

And so we had this video, as many bands did.

And if MTV wasn't playing it, you're stuck with a product

that you couldn't show anywhere.

- I didn't even know sometimes whether the local bands

were local or if they're from Europe.

When I first saw Ball and Pivot,

when I saw the "Down" video, am I gonna think

that they're necessarily from Boston?

Not necessarily.

I mean it looked a lot like Duran Duran, the video did.

- I might as well face the fact that it's a dirty, dirty job.

- Hi, Sue. - Hello, Sue.

- But somebody's gotta do it.

- The fact that I did do news

and some entertainment reporting,

I sort of stood out from the VJ world on that station.

Good evening, this is the V66 news update.

I'm Susan Beauchamp.

- Please give me a call on the V line.

The number is 931-1066.

Write it down, keep it close to your heart.

If there's something special

that would just make your Tuesday.

What I brought to the table, aside from youth and enthusiasm,

is that I had experience in television.

I knew how to put pictures and sound on TV.

Hi, I'm Tracy Cox.

If you're heading to the slopes for this holiday weekend,

you won't need as many layers of clothing.

- V66 was clearly instrumental in this market

and in New England of breaking Aha

due to the fact that the video was being played

on this outlet before it was available

to national video outlets.

And it was also played before the record was being exposed

on radio stations in this market.

- I remember how huge that was for us

because we broke that record.

Because we had it before MTV made it a hit nationally.

We made it a hit in the northeast.

- We fell in love with them.

We thought, "This is great."

It's so cutting edge with the drawings

and the song was a great song,

really hooky little pop song.

So we put it in on hot rotation and, bang,

went number one.

Kiss 108 started playing it.

I think BCN started playing it.

- I saw what the number one video was, by the way.

- The number one video was "Take on Me" by Aha, Sunny.

- That song was called "Take On Me."

Very, very shortly after V66 started programming it,

we were getting reports of people walking

into record stores looking for that record

before it was even available

and before it was even serviced to radio.

That's probably the best example

of the power of V66 in this territory.

- The band came in to do a live interview at V66.

The keyboard player, this blond kid,

and the receptionist, who was pretty attractive,

started chatting, they hit it off.

She ended up going to see the band

perform that night in Boston.

And they ended up getting married.

- "King of Rock" was the most requested music video

on the station in the station's history.

- You guys don't belong in here. [laughing]

- I don't know if it was Bud Melman,

the character who opens the door to let them in

through the front door

or whether it was the mix of the rap with the rock,

but it was an unbelievably successful video.

And one that because we played it so often,

definitely got a lot of viewers to come to the station.

- We were playing rap.

We were playing a fair amount of rap as I remember.

[hip hop music]

- [rapping]: Don't spend your weeknights all alone.

Yeah, hang out with me, I'm Perry Stone.

Music videos are what I got

to keep your evenings fresh and hot.

Grab the kids and grandma too.

It's something new and fun to do.

Forget the rest, I've got the best.

I'll put the others to the test.

Here's the facts on where and when,

V66, 6:00 to 10:00.

- MTV had what they called exclusive

if you remember... anyone out there remember watching MTV

when they would say "world exclusive."

That meant that for stations like V66 and our friends

at U68, we couldn't play the video for six months.

But I had found out that if the band owned the rights

to their own video that I could challenge that law with MTV.

♪ Now look at them yoyos

- 'Cause at this point from our request lines,

"Money for Nothing" was our most requested video.

And we were not allowed to play it.

And I thought that was really unfair.

So I called the manager of Dire Straits.

The manager was totally behind us

and wanted us to play the video.

He goes, "Well, then put it on the air.

"And if anyone calls you to take it off,

tell them they have to call me."

We flew with it on the air

and literally within like an hour,

the Warner Brothers rep calls me up

and she goes, "I don't know what you just did

"but you just started World War III here.

"We've got MTV on the phone over here barking at us.

"We've got the manager over here saying

we want everyone to play our videos."

♪ Look at that, look at that

♪ I want my, I want my

♪ I want my MTV

- First look at it now from Bob and Zip,

"Just a Big Ego."

[upbeat music]

- We were kind of dabbling in the song parody thing,

Bob and I.

We put this song together, but we didn't... we had a problem.

We didn't have a David Lee Roth.

But this guy called and sang for us on the phone.

Dead, dead on ringer.

We met him.

We went, "Jackpot!"

He looked just like David Lee Roth.

We say we've gotta do a video

because the guy looks just like him.

So we got a whole bunch of people out on Revere Beach.

- We were really surprised that it really did so good.

- And John Garabedian loved it.

And the next thing I knew,

V66 was banging this video

over and over again.

I heard it was a huge success, hugely popular.

- Everyone at the Live Aid show, which was fantastic

and we got the rights to broadcast in Boston.

- [Narrator] It's coming, Live Aid.

The greatest collection of rock musicians

ever assembled for one event in the history

of the world.

Live Aid, beginning at 7:00 a.m., Saturday, July 13,

by satellite from London.

At noon we join the Philadelphia concert.

Join V66 for this once in a lifetime history-making event.

- The potential for music to change the world

has always been there.

And Live Aid was really a step in the right direction.

- That was a giant moment in my generation's youth.

- One of the biggest music events of all time.

- That was pretty amazing event.

It was just so big.

Just look out and, you know.

What a mass of humanity. [laughing]

- We were able to broadcast what was

the nationally syndicated portion of that

even though MTV had their piece of it.

And ABC had their piece of it.

We were able to do it almost 24 hours.

- [Narrator] The Live Aid concert, Saturday, July 13,

in Philadelphia and London.

And V66 wants to send you.

- For us to be able to do a sweepstakes

that involved getting somebody to actually go

to these places, that was huge for us.

- [Narrator] V66 sent Plainville's

Mary Ellen Morowitz to London,

Natick's Marcia Rutledge and family to Philly

and V66 brought Live Aid home to you.

[rock music]

- I think that was our highest rating by far

of everything that we did.

- [Narrator] With your help, Live Aid raised millions

for famine relief.

When it happens in music, Boston's new V66

takes you there!

♪ Mother, don't wanna go to school today

- Extreme, which is where we got the name Extreme.

♪

♪ Mother, don't wanna go to school today

- Scott was just brilliant.

He got great ideas.

He came up with a great storyline.

- We had another band from Medford, Malden called Extreme.

And they had this little homemade video by this kid

who went to Emerson College, who went on to make...

become a big video producer called,

"Mutha, Don't Wanna Go to School Today."

And it was shot at Melrose High School.

We thought, "This is great!"

It's a great video.

It's got great spirit, it's got great energy.

And it's local.

So on it went, and wham, went to number one.

- This was a platform locally that just played every day.

And it really helped.

I mean, between that and local radio stations at the time.

- In the case of Extreme, I believe we had a hand

in them going to get a record deal.

- We were being catapulted forward by this whole...

you know, the video thing that was happening.

The heavy rotation on V66, the airplay.

♪ Mother, don't wanna go to school today

- Join us weekdays. - For more in your morning.

- [Narrator] Ian and Susan, mornings on V66.

- [Ian And Susan] The beat of Boston.

- It was like I died and gone to heaven.

Working TV, I'm hanging out with rock stars,

there's this great local music scene,

you know, and I'm getting paid to do it.

- He was the kid.

Like he was a couple of years younger than all of us.

We were all in our early 20s I think.

And he was just a couple years younger.

- And one full hour of your requests.

We talk on the air, you and I.

And we play your favorite video.

Live line is always a gas.

It was very much a big family.

I don't remember there being a lot

of big ego clashes or anything like that.

- One of my top three favorite places to work ever.

Because it just was so ridiculous

how everybody got along.

- Rides... - Games...

- Cotton Candy.

- [Everyone] And V66.

- [Narrator] It's a rockin' time, Sunday, July 28.

V66 Day at Whalom Park.

Fun, fantastic, fabulous entertainment for all.

Be with the V.

- Join us for a whale of a good time.

- Sunday, July 28.

- V66 day at Whalom Park!

- I don't know anyone that worked there

that didn't love it.

And if you get... if you're put in that type of environment,

when you look forward to going to work every day,

that's all you can ask for.

That's all you can ask for in life.

- I'm excited to introduce Anne Saxon,

who's our latest addition to the V66 lineup.

How you doing?

- Good. I'm happy to be here. - Welcome.

- Anne Saxon was sexy.

And we needed somebody who would keep the guys up all night,

and she filled the bill.

- At first, it was a little lonely.

But then after a while there seemed to be

a group of people who didn't make me feel so lonely,

where I did have calls coming in.

This is the Del Fuegos from their album

entitled "Boston, Mass.," Don't Run Wild here on V66.

["Don't Run Wild" by the Del Fuegos playing]

- The Del Fuegos, who were great,

they were kind of like the biggest of that kind of scene.

- The think that got my attention about V66

was Woo Woo Ginsburg.

The fact that Woo Woo was doing this video channel was...

that was important to me.

- [Narrator] V66 Celebrity Open House.

- We're the Del Fuegos, your pals from outer space.

- Join us this week on Celebrity Open House.

- There's one thing about the "Don't Run Wild" video

is that we were proud of Boston.

And we wanted Boston to be right there in the background.

- People that didn't live in the inner Boston area

were getting turned on to the group because of V66.

So the outer suburbs kids who started coming

to the Channel shows and that kind of thing.

- Thank God for V66, man.

Because, you know, V66 was responsible for capturing

all of those great musicians.

- The woman on everyone's mind I guess is Gloria.

So I guess we're gonna check out her progress right here.

There she be, right there, yeah.

The update on Gloria is like this.

One of the most dangerous hurricanes, of course,

of the century is in the Atlantic,

460 miles slightly east of due south.

Winds are currently estimated at 130 miles per hour.

Forecasters aren't sure whether it will hit New England,

but the situation could change.

- And the transformer in front of the building

just blows up in flames.

And all the lights go out.

And I go, "Oh shit." [laughing]

We're off the air.

An hour later, the lights came back on.

He wired us into the building emergency generator.

- So we got on the air but there was no sound.

And I think we might have put a picture

or something up you know.

And the camera was like a test pattern for a little while.

And then finally we got a single video cassette player.

- So we were on the air showing videos with no audio.

- And a lot of people were like, "How can we do that?"

And he said, "You know what, we gotta stay on the air."

- We finally got the audio back

and finally things started to work.

- To me that's... you know, that's what John was great at

was, "You know what, we're gonna be"--

and that's where I learned it is--

"You know what, there's a hurricane coming.

"We're gonna be on the air live during the hurricane

telling everybody about it."

Other people might just go, "You know what, run...

"Let's run, you know, 400 videos back to back

so that everybody can get out of here and be safe."

But he wouldn't do that.

And, in turn, everybody who worked there

took a lot of pride in,

"All right, we're gonna cover this hurricane.

"We're a music video station

but we're gonna cover this hurricane."

- People obviously were watching.

People had somehow either had battery televisions

or had enough power and were able to tune in V66.

We were trying to get out there

and they were trying to see what we were doing.

["Centerfold" by J Geils Band playing]

♪ Come on!

♪

- I guess an actor, an actress would say it's like

doing a movie as opposed to a stage show.

You know, when you're onstage, you do it, it's live,

it comes out, it's gone.

When doing a video, it's like doing a record.

Or I'm dating myself, a CD.

- ♪ The memory of my angel

- We weren't finished playing and we had material

and thought we'd give it a try.

- J. Geils Band and Fright Night here on WVJV Channel 66.

- John and Arnie were always very good to us.

- I remember interviewing Nikki Sixx

and I don't know if you remember the story or not,

but Nikki came up on my show and was really high.

He wasn't drunk, he was just really high.

And he was wildly entertaining as an interview

but right in the middle of the interview,

he sneezes or blows his nose or something.

And we're live.

There wasn't any tape delay on V66.

And then he blows his nose and he looks down

at the napkin.

He looks at me and he goes, well there goes 50 bucks.

Because he was just so high on blow.

And meanwhile I can hear my producer in the other room

go [chuckling]

- I sort of got it around the time of V66,

especially when the bands would come in,

that the good ones understand

that this is part of their job, doing this TV thing

where they come in and they sit down

next to you and you pretend you're friends for ten minutes.

- Hi, New England, this is Pat Benatar

and you're watching V66, New England's favorite

music video station in stereo.

- The Bangles were there, that was a memorable day.

- We're the Bangles.

- And you're watching V66.

- The beat of Boston.

- Right on.

- Peter Frampton.

- Run DMC.

- Michael Hutchence from INXS.

- [Narrator] See your favorite video stars

or Boston celebrities host an hour

of their all time favorite videos.

- This is called "Against All Odds" on the V.

- Mick Jones from the Clash at the time

from Big Audio Dynamite.

- You ought to get out at Strawberry's Midnight Madness

if you wanna catch playing the whole album

on the fourth of October.

Be there or be square.

- Emo Phillips.

He was kind of weird but funny.

- My name is Emo.

♪

- The guys for Duran Duran came in.

- Hi, this is Cheech.

- And this is Chong.

- And we're Led Zeppelin.

- They were great too.

But since we were such a full service station

in the entertainment realm,

not even necessarily with music, but entertainment,

we had a lot of people walking in and out of that place.

- V66 just made it hard for us to go to school

after a while, man.

We couldn't step off to school without getting mobbed.

- Audience participation.

Get the audience involved in your radio station.

And it doesn't matter how you do it.

That's not important.

Doesn't matter if the contest is some corny question

or some listening, wait to hear the bell go off.

It just matters you get them involved

and you get them listening

and you make the station sticky.

So contesting is an important part of that.

- And since V66 is the first stereo TV station

in the Boston area, we're giving away four

of these RCA 25-inch stereo color TV sets.

- We had to give away concert tickets.

We had to give away albums.

You had to give away music videos.

You had to give away those things

that radio stations were giving away to compete.

- And I was so excited and I got through.

And then they said my name on the thing

and I was like, "Oh, my God... I got Tina... I got Tina tickets."

It was my very first concert. I was so excited.

- Both my brother and I won tickets off V66

to see Prince for the Purple Rain tour.

And we also won tickets to see Julian Lennon at the Orpheum.

- [Narrator] V66 and MCA Records invite you

to an unforgettable weekend with Roxy

at the Roxy in LA to see Charlie Sexton live.

You'll enjoy VIP seats at the Roxy in LA

and a live concert with Charlie Sexton.

- V66, the beat of Boston.

- It's the name the V baby contest.

So this has been established that this child has no name.

It's homely and it has no name.

- Get ready, V66 big bucks is coming.

We want you to find one of the dollar bills

we've secretly circulated throughout

the greater Boston viewing area.

- People all over New England were looking for

this particular dollar bill

with this particular serial number

and that got us incredible buzz

because when people started reading their dollar bills,

other people would say, what are you doing

reading the dollar bill?

- V66 big bucks.

Your chance to win up to 66,000 dollar bills featuring moi.

- And the idea was then they'd say,

"Oh, well, on V66 they're having a contest.

"And if you find the right dollar bill,

you're gonna get a lot of money."

And so pretty soon everybody was going to say, "Oh, wow."

And then they started watching V66.

It was like the best free advertising in the world

and the best word of mouth advertising.

- Hi, I'm Tim Kelly and I just won $21,000

playing V66 big bucks.

$21,00. - You bet.

- Television and radio are two different businesses,

and when you come from a different culture

into the new culture,

you see opportunities that they never saw before.

I look at the guys who invented YouTube and Facebook,

and MySpace not as geniuses but as young people

who looked at a world and said,

"Why isn't somebody doing this?"

It just was totally natural to them.

So when you have radio people going into television,

they see, "Why don't they do this? Why don't you do that?"

- ♪ We built this city

- One of the great things that we did was

we did our own video.

Built our own video for "We Built This City."

And made it all about rock and roll in Boston.

- John came to me one day, okay.

He was hot to get "We Built This City"

on the air.

Problem was is that he couldn't

because MTV had the exclusive rights to it.

I go into one of these edit suites

and it must have been ten, 12 days later

I came out with this thing.

- I was beating on him.

"Jay, when is this gonna be done?"

It was day after day and he'd get dragged away

for other projects and I'd say,

"Well, can't somebody else do that and you can finish this?"

'Cause the song was so big and it was great.

I ended up finishing it.

He got about halfway through it

and then he had some other thing he had to work on.

So I said, "All right, I'll do it."

So I went in and I spent a day and knocked it out.

Not the best use of the CEO's time, but it was fun.

[laughing]

- I still watch it frequently. [chuckles]

I show it to other people.

Because it has a whole series of photographs of me.

- Probably nowhere else in the country

would it have any relevance to anybody.

But I think for people that were familiar with the station

and they see that video, they connect with the idea

that for one brief moment, V66 really was

the musical vital signs of the city.

- [Narrator] Live at the palace last Saturday night,

Miss Hawaiian Tropic showed offer her tan,

Lenny Clarke laughed it up with Sunny Joe White,

and Perry Stone made his dancing debut with Mary Jo.

- The Palace.

Sunny Joe White used to do it, God rest his soul.

And then they had me do it.

It was just your typical really cheesy '80s nightclub scene.

You know, the mode of dress was just so over-the-top.

It was like John Hughes movie.

Like Z Cavariccis and kind of those Duran Duran boots.

And a lot handkerchiefs and that sort of stuff.

And I was just as guilty as anybody else.

You know, I mean, I had a whole wardrobe full of that stuff.

You know, so Mr. Stonewash.

- [Narrator] Boston at night, a city that lives

for the evening and the excitement.

Now be a part of the night in the world's greatest city

as Ian O'Malley takes you to Boston's hottest nightspots

with the people, the stories, and the videos

that make the city come alive.

Boston Beat with Ian O'Malley.

- And nobody had done that.

There was no television station,

first of all it was rock and roll and, you know,

nobody on on any of the television stations here

would do anything.

Channel four, channel five, channel seven,

they didn't do anything covering music.

So nobody would ever broadcast from a Prince show before.

Nobody had ever had a concert on television

with the Del Fuegos.

So it was just like electric.

- I know Prince played at the Metro.

Like a surprise concert at the Metro.

- [Narrator] V66, your ticket to the best concerts,

music video WVJV.

- I remember going to Rush, Twisted Sister.

- I remember the Tina Turner Concert.

- Well, we did a live show

from a John Cougar concert one night.

- We went to Motley Crue together and Tears for Fears.

And Dire Straits was the most awesome ever.

- Aerosmith, bad boys of Boston.

Roxy talked to them earlier today.

Roxy, how'd it go?

- Unbelievable.

A band that I had been listening to

for so many years that I loved.

And here I was on top of the world

literally and figuratively

talking about this-this return to Aerosmith's hometown.

- That was a a technical nightmare of the day for us

because we got picture but no sound.

So I remember and it was all about the microwave

that wasn't really working between our station

and the satellite and the whole... the dish and all that.

And it was just like yikes.

And then when we did get some audio,

it almost sounded like you were listening to it

through a telephone.

- Steven Tyler from the stage was getting ready

to introduce "Lightning Strikes."

And at that time it was the only video

by Aerosmith that we'd been playing.

And he thanked V66.

- You all know this.

V66 number one video all week,

a song that we put out a long time ago.

- And everybody in the audience started going, "V, V, V."

It was... wow.

♪ It's dog eat dog when you meet your rival

♪ In the combat zone it's a means of survival

- Hi I'm Ron Belleville,

I'm the winner for V66 drawing for the day.

This is my wife Grace.

We're having an incredible time.

Thank you, V66.

- One of my favorite metal LPs of all time

is from Aerosmith.

It's "Night in the Ruts."

♪

- If you're watching me, you're watching the V.

Stereo video rocks 66.

♪ Let the music do the talking

- It was great to have them come by.

And we'll get them all in the studio and it was a blast.

- Hi, I'm Steven Tyler.

- And I'm Joe Perry.

- The toxic twins of Aerosmith, and you're watching V66.

- Boston rock video in stereo.

Would you sing "Back in the Saddle"?

- Nah.

- And to come here to Boston

where Aerosmith was actually friends with John Garabedian

and hung out at the studio

and I got to interview them

I don't even know how many times.

- And you're rocking on V66 in stereo.

- And I would sit there with my VHS VCR

and sit there and wait for Aerosmith videos

and record the interview that they had

and just watching over and over until I wore out the VHS.

- It was not uncommon for them to just drop by unannounced.

Of course there were the announced visits.

But sometimes you'll just be walking down the hall

and for no apparent reason

Steven Tyler would walk right by the other way.

- And if you want to rock tonight, baby,

watch the V66 Aerosmith.

- I think V66 in a lot of ways is quite responsible

for saving Aerosmith's ass in a lot of ways.

I mean that nicely.

We got behind them and eventually, of course,

on their own efforts and new management

and that sort of thing, they cleaned up their act.

And of course they've been, for a number of years,

back really on top of their game.

- [Narrator] Get ready to watch V66

for the hottest party in town.

The V66 New Year's Eve party live from the Metro.

- Probably the most fun in live television I've ever had

was that night.

- It is the way to do 1985, a just ending.

- [Crowd] Three, two, one!

[cheering]

- I mean it's just neat that so many people

wanted to be partying with V66 to ring in the new year.

I mean it was, you were like a friend to so many people.

- All right, we are here live at Metro.

I'm Tracy Cox filling in for Sunny Joe White,

who is lost somewhere in this incredible crowd.

As you know, we are about ten minutes into this new year

and we are having such a party.

- What was the best highlight of the past year for you?

- Mary Jo, turning on the TV and seeing you.

- Look out, Miami, the Pats are gonna burst your bubbles

and go to the Super Bowl, yeah!

♪ New England, the Patriots and we.

♪ Here's a V for victory

- It was made with a lot of Boston personalities in it.

- It was a reflection of just how carefree

and unconventional our whole approach

to the television medium was.

♪ New England, the Patriots and we.

- And then, you know, we get buried in the Super Bowl,

so you know I wish we had a better way

of putting a period on on the whole experience.

- It's been a year.

Has it been good for you?

It's been great for me, our first anniversary.

- It was quite an accomplishment at the station

to be on the air and certainly on the air

for as long as we were.

- Happy birthday, V66!

From Face to Face.

- Happy birthday, V66, from Big Julio Dynamite.

- Hi, I'm Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue.

I'd like to wish V66 a happy birthday.

- This is Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick

and happy birthday, V66.

- I'm Joey V. - Kevin.

- Gene.

- Louie of Mass.

And we like to wish V66...

- [Everyone] A happy birthday!

- Live from the Metro!

- It's the V66 first anniversary party!

[cheering]

- [Narrator] One year ago,

V66 ignited the Boston rock scene.

[explosion]

Tonight, we celebrate.

The V66 first anniversary party is underway.

Live from Metro, Grammy nominee Jon Butcher Axis,

Warner Bros. recording artist the Del Fuegos,

and Down Avenue take the stage

for knockout party performances.

V66 VJs Mary Jo and David O'Leary

bring you all the party excitement.

- We did a big concert at the Metro.

I think we had the Del Fuegos

and sort of an All-Star band as I recall.

Members of the Geils band and maybe members of the Cars

came in to play a song or two,

or sort of all kind of played together.

- Please welcome the V66 all-star birthday bash band!

Let's hear it, come on!

♪ You say it's your birthday

- I mean, by the time it reached the one-year mark,

they really had a presence there.

- Hi, we're the Del Fuegos from Boston, Mass.

- [Everybody] Happy birthday, V66.

- My name's Benjamin Orr from the Cars.

Happy birthday, V66.

- I'm Brad Whitford.

- And I'm Joey Kramer.

And a happy birthday to V66 from Aerosmith.

- [Both] Happy birthday from Extreme.

- Hello, I'm Weird Al Jankovic.

And I'm Billy the birthday pig!

And we want to wish all our friends at V66

a happy stinking birthday!

- Again, I'd like to thank everyone.

It was an unbelievable night.

I think you all did a great job.

And let's do it again next year, okay?

- We had a bunch of posters made up,

pictures of all the VJs.

And we sent it out to all our advertisers,

to promote the station within, we're one year old.

We're not new anymore.

We're part of the landscape.

We're not going away yet.

- And things had really kind of locked in a little bit

in terms of what we were doing, the awareness of the V66,

and the awareness both on the part of bands

in the music community

but also on the part of viewers.

- Ratings were never great.

And part of it is I think that there was a lot

of short-term viewing to V66

where people would switch to it

and they'd switch back and forth later on.

Television ratings measure two different things--

the number of households you reach

and the share of audience you have among those households.

In terms of the audience we reached,

our numbers went through the roof.

We were reaching two million people,

which is almost the whole TV market.

And considering we were a channel that appealed

mostly to a younger audience,

I mean people over 40 watching us

would have been a stretch.

'Cause we were more youth oriented.

We had the cumulative.

In the first year we didn't have the share

because we didn't have the stickiness.

- We needed higher ratings.

- We had to develop more lifestyle programming

that had real content in it

that made us sticky.

Stuff that had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

- [Narrator] All day, all night,

V66 is much more than music.

News, sports, weather, lottery, lunchtime liveline.

- Everybody knew who V66 was.

Everybody watched V66.

But we could turn that gigantic audience

into advertising revenue because the national

and the regional advertisers wanted to see the book.

The Arbitron book, they wanted to see

how we were rating in the book.

And if they looked in the book they wouldn't see any numbers

that were to the level that they needed

in order to buy advertising on our station.

Because TV Guide wasn't listing us

the way that we wanted to be listed

because they came back to us and said,

"Hey, all you're doing is playing music videos.

"We need you to have programs if you want us to list you

as a programmed station."

- Hey Boston, check out the latest in music fashion

and dance on "American Bandstand" here on V66.

- I was instrumental in getting,

in finding out when "American Bandstand"

was not being carried in Boston, and calling ABC and saying,

"How can we carry 'American Bandstand'?"

- V66, the beat of Boston.

- [Narrator] Saturdays at 6:00 on V66,

the Beat of Boston.

- Sunday afternoon's nonstop laughs.

- One of the most things that we do.

- [laughing]

- [Narrator] With Bob and Zip.

- We had character bits, sketches

with voice impressionists, and character actors

that we also used on our radio show.

We booked guests to come in and sit down and talk with us.

- It was just fun to be able to go in there

on a Sunday afternoon and kind of do our bits.

- When the two came on the air there

it was just more less their morning show

and bringing it television.

- When you're watching the weekend break

with Bob and Zip, you're kind of like a member

of our family.

- Let me get a hanky for you.

- Here's what you get just looking in.

- [someone singing on telephone]

- And for a nominal fee...

- You're up to 300 now.

I mean it's funny because today I wouldn't do it

because I wouldn't think I could pull it off.

Back then no one told us what we could or couldn't do.

If we could think of it, we could do it.

- [Narrator] "The Superstar Show."

For the next hour, join Mary Jo...

- I would get into work at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning

and start reading and researching.

This was before internet.

And we were on the air that night.

The Virgin tour last year made big news.

Madonna went on the road and it was her first tour ever,

tremendous amount of work went together

in helping to put the show on for you.

Scalpers are known to get $60 for a ticket

to see this show.

- [Narrator] Weeknights at 9:00,

"The Superstar Show."

Weeknights at 10:00, "Boston Tonight" with John Garabedian.

- Welcome to "Boston Tonight."

This is Friday night in Boston.

We start a big long holiday weekend

and have a fine show for you tonight.

♪

Sarah Chalmer will be with us tonight.

She makes the best apple pie in New England.

And we're going to put her to the acid test.

We're not gonna give her acid.

Just the acid test, it's terrific.

I think Dr. Ruth Westheimer ought to have her own benefit.

Call it Sex Aid. [laughing]

You can certainly continue to have the essence

of the videos around what you do with shows based on them.

But you have to have stuff that appeals to the demo.

It would have been better if we didn't have pro wrestling.

- We had a chance to pick up one of the wrestling shows

and we thought we'd just throw it against the wall as they say.

- From the wrestling capitals of the world,

it's V66 professional wrestling.

- It'd be better if we had some local thing

we could have produced ourselves.

But we didn't have a budget for it.

'Cause television's very expensive to produce.

You wanna produce a show, you need 15 to 20 people

to produce a show.

To produce a really good show.

You can do it with four people

but it looks like crap and no one's gonna watch it.

So if you want ratings, which will then generate revenues,

you gotta have a crew and you gotta have

a budget to pay the crew.

- And it was the pyramid I had a real problem with.

- [Narrator] Weeknights at 6:00.

- 'Cause of course the viewer's like,

"What's this all about?

"I can watch '$100,000 Pyramid' on channel 38.

This isn't why I come here."

So what happens is you start to confuse viewers.

- [Narrator] "Boston SportsBeat" with Bill and Tank.

- The idea of using music and combining it with sports

had literally never been done.

Every once in a while you would see a music piece

in an Olympic profile on NBC or ABC and it was special.

- [Narrator] Friday, the Red Sox hit the street

for a nine- game road trip.

First stop, the rootin', tootin' Texas Rangers.

- The feeling that I got at the time

was that we can get any athlete.

Anybody would come on the show with us

because they were all watching V66.

- I just don't like this week off stuff.

This could really been bad if we had

to sit around for ten days.

- I gotta say that Bruce Springsteen and "Glory Days"

reminds me of my baseball days.

- So by going to a "Boston SportsBeat,"

we were able to say, "Hey, now we have a program."

"TV Guide" will now list the program.

People will now be aware

that there's a sports program on V66.

And maybe that will help us to get the advertising

because we start getting those quarter hours of viewership.

- You know the sales income stream is going up

at this slow rate.

And then your expenses, if you want to grease them

go up like this.

And then your cash on hand which is going down like this.

So the more you spend, the faster the cash goes away.

So you try to pick these curves that get your revenues up

so the cash would go down and go up like this.

- People don't watch channels, they want shows.

And that was a hard lesson for V66 to learn.

- One of the toughest things I ever did in my life

was calling a meeting of the entire staff

of "Boston Tonight,"

and walking into the conference room

and telling them the show was canceled

and they'll all be laid off.

But we'd give them severance and take care of their,

you know, their departure.

That was hard.

How do you tell 29 people they're fired?

Put yourself in those shoes, it's not fun.

It's just not fun.

Especially people you really liked,

people who are really talented and you care about.

- Very emotional.

There were some tears being shed

and a very, a very downbeat vibe going through a place

that up until then had been so positive.

- The biggest group of people who got laid off

were the people who worked on the in-house programming

"Boston Tonight" and "SportsBeat."

All those people were let go at the same time

on one morning with no notice whatsoever.

It was devastating.

- The station went back toward music video programming

away from the appointment programming.

And in that process, the station staff became smaller.

So there was an awareness that the things hadn't worked out

with the effort to do appointment programming.

- We got Meryl's report that we have enough money

to get to Thanksgiving but not to Christmas.

Things took a turn.

It was sort of like going through a little bit of a death.

You're losing somebody.

It's like there's a part of you that really hurts.

And as far as the audience was concerned,

everything was great.

As far as the market, I mean we were,

we were popular.

But you gotta pay for it.

- They were really smart businessmen

and the fact that they didn't fall in love

with the property at the expense of the shareholders

and the investors, and so they said,

"This is probably something we should sell."

- You have to be pragmatic in life.

You have to accept reality because there is only reality.

And if you accept reality and deal with reality

and make your decisions based on reality,

the best reality you can find,

you're gonna be making the best decisions

you can for yourself.

So I had to do what was best for...

best for everything.

- The "Boston Globe"-- Tuesday, July 1, 1986,

had a cartoon that shows two street salesmen.

One is selling apples

and the other one independent stations.

- We all have tried our best to make it successful,

and none of us wanted to fail.

- Kidder-Peabody sold the station for them.

Conducted an auction, took bids,

and then negotiated the final transaction.

- We had a visit from the chairman

and president of Home Shopping Network, Roy Speer,

and Bud Paxson.

And they were flying in from Tampa.

- He wanted to have terrestrial distribution

for the Home Shopping Network, which is already a big success.

And Bud and his partner flew up to Boston

and sat down with us and negotiated for several hours.

- And we sold the company for $20 million.

And everybody smiled.

- We made a lot of money for the investors.

Like I said, they pulled the plug at the right time.

They were great people to work with and deal with.

- I think they made every effort they could do

to keep the station alive as long as they could.

And when it became clear that V66 as such

wasn't going to be able to sustain itself,

they did what they had to do.

- We also made a deal with them to run their programming

over a substantial part of the broadcast day

in exchange for being paid a large amount of cash.

♪ Who counts the money

♪ Underneath the bar

♪ Who rides the wrecking ball

♪ Into our guitars

♪ Tell us you need us...

- Where is the music?

Where is the videos?

Where is... I don't wanna buy a stupid watch.

- And as a kid, that didn't make any sense to me,

the idea of maybe they couldn't get enough

advertising or whatever.

That didn't mean anything to me.

It's just, like, why... that means people prefer

to watch shopping, you know?

- To go from rock video to fake diamond rocks.

And that's what they were pushing.

It just... it was, eh.

- I felt that that was an incredibly

appropriate reflection of the times.

The whole merchandising, selling dynamic

being more important than creativity, art, value,

expression, discovery.

- I was fascinated as a businessperson

because I realized that John Garabedian was so lucky

to have had the right rights at the right time

to cash out big time.

It was kind of... for me it was more of

a local boy made good story rather than any sadness

about the actual airwave.

- Obviously there will come a time when you sell it.

Everything is to be born, live, and die.

It's just the way the cycle works in the universe.

Whether it's a star or a person or a fad.

I think it really has to do with an underlying motivation

in life or being turned on by something

and following your dreams.

I've never in my life tried to make money at anything.

I've always tried to follow what I love to do

and what I believe in.

And that gets me up every morning.

- I remember seeing John shortly afterward at an event,

a charity event or something

and talking to him a little bit about it.

And, you know, just asking him if he missed it

and I remember him tell me, yeah, he did

but you know at the same time he was in business

and he's in business to make money.

And so it was the... it was the best alternative.

- We all knew we were part of something historic

in Boston music history.

And I think we're all very grateful for that.

It would have been nice if it lasted longer.

- Its importance in remembering a time when

we were excited about music.

And music was starting to come to life with pictures.

- I remember in one of the local music newspapers,

all the local bands were all sad as we were.

- So V66 was a valuable outlet for us

and it was a sad day when it was bought

by the Home Shopping Network.

- I think that was really disappointing for all of us.

- We got a lot of good perks out of V66.

- It was a shame because, you know, it was a boost

to the local... you know, to the bands who could get

their videos played.

- They were playing people that could barely, you know,

just scrape up enough money to put a video together.

'Cause that's really how you can get noticed at that point.

Like the whole thing with putting a bunch of demos

and then trying to shop them around,

if you didn't have a video, I mean you really weren't

gonna go anywhere.

- When you realize that you've now elevated

and have gone to another level with your life and career,

you take the good.

You remember the good, you remember that

they were an intricate part of helping

getting the careers off and going.

And I think those are the memories you take

and keep with you, but we know like anything else

times change, music change.

- I think anything that supports local art in any way

is such a valuable part of a community.

- It's kind of at the same moment then that was ending

that we were starting Lemonheads.

But we were gonna have to do it without the benefit

of music videos locally.

- It happened a year and a half, holy...

Wow, that has gotta be one of the most

short-lived influential things in the Boston music scene.

- It's kind of like the Sex Pistols.

One album, tons of influence.

♪ When I tell him that I'm falling in love

♪ Why does he say-a-ay

♪ Hush hush, keep it down now, voices carry

- YouTube is the new V66, I think, right?

'Cause it's like you feel like you discover the things.

They have that sort homemade feeling.

[rock music]

[somber music]

- I sold V66.

I ended up with a pretty good payday.

And then I had no idea because here I am,

I was like 46 years old, and I thought,

"What am I gonna do next?"

I could have probably gotten along without working

but that's not me, that's not what...

I love what I do.

I really love what I do.

And out of all things there are to do in the world,

I can do anything.

I can drive a cab.

I can become an airline pilot.

I can do anything.

I thought, there's nothing I enjoy more than radio.

I love radio.

But the kind of radio that I love,

which goes back to Open House Party back in the '60s, WORC,

doesn't exist.

I said I've done this show, it's called Open House Party.

It's a big national party.

You get 800 lines so people are calling

from all over the country.

You have the biggest stars in the business

come on every week as your guests

and you have something to talk up and get some charisma.

You have live performances in the studio of guests.

You have big contests, with prizes that money can't buy.

You have mixing by the best DJ mixers.

I said, everything, everything is the best.

And he put it out on satellite and it goes out

every Saturday night.

- [Announcer] John Garabedian.

The all cool, all request Open House Party

is on the air.

- [John] Ah, cowabunga!

Welcome in to the biggest party on the planet.

We are your soundtrack for Saturday night.

♪

- I still had an interest in pyramid broadcasting.

And they said they'd be happy to have me back there.

People never forgot V66.

They never forgot me as a disc jockey.

And it was part of their growing up.

- After leaving the station

I went into the mortgage business and actually started

my own mortgage company.

And I did not do subprime mortgages.

I only did fixed rate mortgages for people

who could afford them.

- Through my association with the channel

and knowing music video directors,

I ended up repping video directors for a company

called Mark Friedman Productions.

- You know, it's 20-something years later.

A month doesn't go by when somebody doesn't

recognize me from V66.

And what's funny about it is they'll go,

"You're that guy from the V66."

"Yeah, yeah."

Now, understand, V66 was here in Boston.

I've lived in this area my whole life.

I've worked on the radio professionally

at Kiss 108, at WBOS, at Magic 106.7,

some big stations,

pretty much nonstop since V66.

So they'll say, "You're that guy from V66.

What have you been doing since V66?"

The radio doesn't matter.

Nobody knows me from the radio but they...

in this case they know V66 from 20-something years ago.

- So I was just sitting there and I was reading

and a guy was skating by.

For whatever reason I was looking up

but he looked to me and he did a double take.

And then he slowed down.

And I understood that he recognized me from somewhere.

But my guess was either VH1

or VH1 Classic for that matter or "Big Brother"

'cause I was on the debut season of that at CBS.

And he skated over and he goes, "Ian O'Malley right?"

I said, "That's correct, how are you?"

He goes, "I'm fine." He goes, "V66."

And I was like, "How did you possibly recognize me?"

He was like. "I just knew, man. V66 though, right?"

Which just really blew my mind.

And lots of times when I talk to people

that were living in Boston

or going to school in that day and age,

primarily radio listeners,

now when I do a charity event or something,

"Like hey, I'm from Boston."

"Oh, did you live there in '85, '86?"

"Sure did.

"Rockin' in Revere, watched you all the time on V66."

- V66 was one of the best experiences of my life

because it was so different it was...

it was not radio, it was visual.

It was radio and TV.

- V66 was my college education.

That's where I learned how to do what I ended up doing

for my career.

- Actually you started working on camera

being a pit reporter.

I worked for CBS for six years covering NASCAR and the NHRA.

I've worked on every major automotive racing series

in the country on television.

Open Wheel, NASCAR, NHRA.

I've done sprint cars.

And it doesn't get any better than that for me.

- 25 years later as a professor,

you're sort of looking back wishing that

media trends hade gone along differently

and that the industry was as good now as it was then.

- I'm thrilled that I got to have that experience.

I think it makes me more sympathetic

to the people who I interview now.

- It really was, in its own little way, very iconic

and a real precursor to a lot of the media

that's out there today.

- Zip and I put out Twisted Christmas in 1987.

And there are a couple of videos associated with that,

but I think it missed the V66 era.

We have a gold record, so we know it sold

at least a half a million copies from the RIAA.

And we put out a number of Christmas albums since

and a few videos that MTV reluctantly played

at 3:00 a.m. twice.

So, another reason to miss V66.

- I think I learned all of that from V66.

I learned about being involved in the community,

about, you know, working hard

to get the the interview that nobody else is going to get.

And about, you know...

and John taught me a lot about trying to be...

say something compelling using the least amount of words.

Nearly everything I know about broadcasting I learned there.

- I'm Sunny Joe White.

We're live at the Palace tonight, everybody,

Route 99 in Saugus.

Your invitation is an open invitation

for you to come down until 2:00 a.m.

- I got the biggest chill inside was watching

when we did our New Year's Eve program.

I think seeing our top 66 countdown

and seeing our New Year's Eve show,

it just made me feel like we've done so much.

- And if there is a particular video you'd like to see,

please do call me up on the V line,

931-1066 and I'll be very happy

to try and get it on for you.

- But in the history of music in Boston

and in the history of radio and television in Boston--

forget that, in the entire country--

there had never been anything like V66.

- V66 was a success because

in the short term that it was on, it hit people.

That's why we're talking today.

20 years plus down the road, people still remember it.

It worked for that short time and then it went away,

and it hasn't worked since.

There's not another local music video television station

in the country.

- The word I think of is "us."

And it wasn't necessarily us that worked there,

it was us the viewers.

It was our channel.

It was Boston.

It was Boston weather.

It was Boston music, it was Boston food.

It was New England.

And New England have always had a very,

it's always been a very family-based society

I found growing up in it.

It's that old Yankee thing.

And it's also that, "Don't fuck with us."

And we had 24-hour channel that said, "Don't fuck with us.

"We can do whatever we want.

We're New Englanders and this is us."

- What's the bottom line and what it accomplished?

I don't know.

I guess it put a bunch of people together in this Petri dish

and they all developed into what they were,

and changed their view and out they went.

And that's kind of what V66 did.

For the community, it gave people a view of television

that they hadn't had before and a view of the pop culture,

which I think reigns supreme over anything.

I mean, I love pop culture.

Pop culture's really it.

Pop culture's everything.

It's from Obama to Sarah Palin.

That's pop culture!

It is our lives, it is what we as human beings show

each other and view each other in.

[rock music]

♪ Cellar floor on bare feet

♪ We come down here to beat the heat

♪ Orange sofa, yellow chair

♪ The antenna in the air

♪ Saw an ad for "Plate World"

♪ Or we'd watch "M.A.S.H." three times a day

♪ Sign says no, no feet on table

♪ Sign says no, we can't get cable

- V66, baby!

- ♪ Blows our mind

♪ Everything is changing on TV

- When I first started watching V66,

I said, "Boy this looks like a successful operation

"and this John Garabedian guy seems like a cool guy.

"I'm gonna call him up and see if he,

if he or any of his VJs need vehicles."

So I tracked down the number, called up,

asked for John Garabedian, got right to him on the phone,

and I said, "John Garabedian, my name is Ernie Boch Jr.

and I love your shows and do any of your VJs need cars?"

And on the other line I heard, "No, kid," click.

And he hung up on me.

And that was my first exposure to John Garabedian.

And a few months later I saw him at a party

because I realized that we had a lot of mutual friends.

And I called him out on it.

Walked right up to him, I said, "What are you doing?

You hang up on me?"

He said, "Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry."

And we became really good friends.

And he was an usher at my wedding.

- ♪ You and me

♪ Everything is changing on TV

♪ Whoa

♪ A snare drum full of milk

♪ It works for me

♪ Whoa

♪ And in the air there is a sound

♪ From outer space or all around

♪ The 66, UHF

♪ There are videos, music videos

♪ No radio, no stereo

♪ We sold our souls to V66

♪ In our basement, out on Bass Rocks

- If you believe that your rock band's

gonna be the biggest band in the world, it's gonna.

If you believe that you're the best director-producer

in the freaking world, you're gonna make it.

If you believe that you're gonna start

a television station and play music all day,

it'll probably happen for you too.

- ♪ V66

♪ In amazement...