How “I Want My MTV” Saved the Network From an Early Grave

By the summer of 1982, MTV was in desperate straits. We were still big in Oklahoma, but few other cable companies were adding MTV to their lineups. In American business, if you ain’t growing, you’re dying. We were in danger of being shut down if we couldn’t convince more cable guys to carry us before the money ran out.

Enter George Lois and Dale Pon, a wild-eyed, smiling but scary-looking dude whose specialty was “media promotion,” which involved banging people over the head repeatedly with a simple idea, such as: “Love songs, nothing but love songs. WPIX FM.” Years earlier, Lois had overseen an ad campaign for an oatmeal brand that enlisted Mickey Mantle and Wilt Chamberlain to cry on camera and whine, “I want my Maypo!” It was ironic, it was satiric, it was bold, it was ridiculous. It was advertising that became more famous than the product.

It seemed to defy logic, but we found that the easiest people to deal with were the hardest people to get to: the artists themselves.

Pon and Lois were hired to help us beat the reaper. “Let’s rip off my old Maypo campaign,” Lois said. “I want my MTV! Fuck these cable guys. You got to go for broke.” Being solicitous of the cable operators had gotten us nowhere. The next step was to get legions of spoiled young-adult baby boomers to demand their MTV just like they had once demanded their Maypo.

So was born the campaign “I want my MTV.” Now we had to identify which stars were the rock-and-roll equivalents of Mickey Mantle and Wilt the Stilt. Lois answered that immediately. “You need to get Mick Jagger. He’s the biggest star in the world.”

Sure, George, no problem.

We had learned some lessons about big stars and MTV. Early on, we had struggled to get permission even to use photos of recording artists. My partner, John Sykes, and I realized we were asking the wrong people. To the record labels, we might as well have been a high school fan club asking for free pictures. They were oriented toward radio and print, not TV. It was worse when we tried to go through the lawyers. They said no as a policy. It seemed to defy logic, but we found that the easiest people to deal with were the hardest people to get to: the artists themselves.

We went off like bounty hunters to bag our targets. Sykes’s mission was Pete Townshend. Les Garland, our hilarious new larger-than-life head of programming, went for Mick Jagger, whom he had met before. I drew David Bowie. This was our Hail Mary shot.

“You want me to do a commercial?” said Jagger… “The Rolling Stones don’t do commercials.”

Sykes waited for hours outside Townshend’s manager’s London office. When Townshend showed up, Sykes went into his boyish charismatic mode. “Hi, Pete, I’m John Sykes! I’m with MTV, it’s a new channel that plays music videos. Would you do a promo for us like you do when you visit radio stations?”

Townshend probably assumed his manager had set this up. He asked Sykes when he wanted to do it. “How about right now?” Pon had rented a garage across the street and had his camera set up. Sykes led Townshend over. It took only a few minutes.

Garland took Pon and a video crew to Paris to stalk the Rolling Stone. When he finally appeared, Garland was on him with the full hustle of a seasoned radio veteran. Jagger remembered him. “All you need to say is ‘I want my MTV,’ ” Garland said.

“You want me to do a commercial?” said Jagger.

“It’s really more of an endorsement, an endorsement for a new phenomenon called music videos.”

“Yeah, that’s a commercial. The Rolling Stones don’t do commercials.”

“Mick, we don’t have any money. But, if this is about money, I’ll give you a dollar.” Garland laid a dollar on the table. It could have gone either way, but Jagger laughed.

Then he said, “I like you, Garland. I’ll do it.”

Jagger told them to come back the next day. They did. He gave them five minutes, during which he said “I want my MTV!” a few times, giving it the weight of “I can’t get no satisfaction!”

Bowie had a very pleasant, somewhat mysterious associate named Coco Schwab. Managers came and went, record labels came and went, but Schwab was constant. I called her. “Would David be willing to do an ‘I Want My MTV’ commercial?”

She responded a day later. “He’d really love to. But David’s skiing in Gstaad, in Switzerland, right now. He’s on vacation. He’ll do it on skis, on the slopes there if you want. Are you up for a little trip? It’ll be fun.”

Was I up for that “little trip”? We were operating like Mission: Impossible. Along with Pon and his crew, I took a plane to Zurich, then a train, and wound through the snowy Alps to posh Gstaad with a full load of heavy 35-mm gear. Schwab had us carry everything out into the snow and set up at the bottom of a remote hill. Bowie skied down in great spirits. He was in his slick “Let’s Dance” phase. On the slopes, he looked like a surfer with blond hair, dressed in a slim parka and shades. He directed himself for the spot. He wanted to ski down, swoosh at the bottom, rip off his sunglasses, and, with a broad grin, say, “I want my MTV.” He thought it would be fun to put our logo on his skis too, in postproduction. We got the spot in a few takes. Mission accomplished.

When we finished, Bowie asked if any of us wanted to ski with him. I am rarely starstruck by artists. Bowie, though. Bowie and the Beatles had a special aura for me, head and shoulders over everyone else. Bowie made it easy in the Alps. He talked about books more than music. He asked about my background. I got some laughs out of him. I knew a girl who worked for him who dated my brother. That was another icebreaker.

Later, when the sun was dropping, Bowie said, “Hey, Tom, how about a sauna later to relax? Top off the day. Come meet me at the Palace Hotel.” The Gstaad Palace was the epicenter of Gstaad high society, the towering five-star grande dame hotel in the valley. I rushed back to our hotel, a spartan lodge barely a cut above a youth hostel. “You’re not going to believe this, but Bowie just invited me to take a sauna with him at the Palace Hotel. See you losers later,” I told the crew.

Bowie was waiting in the spa. We walked together into the sauna. There was only one other person there. He was sitting on a high bench up in the back, deep in the fog. I squinted. It was Paul McCartney! Jesus Christ. Somehow, I’d made it into the Sauna of the Stars. Bowie and McCartney, and Tommy Freston from Connecticut, sat around naked, wrapped in towels, taking turns throwing water on the hot rocks. We shot the shit for half an hour. They were easy to talk to and eager to hear about MTV. I was full of gratitude.

“Jagger’s in,” we told Pat Benatar. That was all she needed to know. Same with the Police. Our storyboard had Sting swinging a telephone receiver around like a madman, almost jumping off the screen and shouting, “America! Call your cable company and demand your MTV!” I helped round up Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Hall & Oates, and others. I traveled with Pon and his camera crew all over the world. After a while, artists were calling us, asking to be in the spots.

“I want my MTV” became one of the most effective ad campaigns of all time. It saved us. It transformed us. After a three-week barrage, without fail, each cable operator in a market we targeted raised a white flag and signed up. We added more than a million new homes every month for more than two years. I had a map in the office to help us plot our next attack. In the end, we closed in on the two major media markets, New York and Los Angeles. This was where the influencers, the opinion makers, the critics, the advertising agencies, the magazine editors, and most importantly, our employees lived. In rock and roll, it takes a long time and a lot of work to become an overnight sensation.

All of America got its MTV. Then the entire world got it.