Hosted by Shannon Doherty, aired around October '01, the first of 5 parts of a really interesting series about 80s music, with tons of interview clips, explaining the impact MTV had not just on music but other forms of pop culture.

This covered pop music going from the late 70s into circa 1980, after disco faded away but before (what we now think of as) the legit "80s 80s" music came into the mainstream. Mostly singer songwriter pop like Christopher Cross, or mainstream arena rock like Journey, was popular; and there wasn't much of an outlet for new music, because radio playlists were strict towards safe sounding music that was already popular.

The birth of Cable TV and VCRs at the time helped propel MTV as one of many channels now in demand in August 1981, although it didn't start majorly influencing music and pop culture until probably late 1982 or even 1983, especially when Michael Jackson and the Thriller videos came out. His success is actually what made MTV shift to other forms of music too, whereas their first year they were strictly rock and roll station.

Madonna's 1984 breakthrough as well as her being a pioneer for women in business as well as expressing her sexuality was covered in a later segment.

Also covered were the older 60s and 70s singers/bands who had successful comebacks or kept being popular because of music videos (including Rod Stewart, John Fogerty, Mick Jagger, Don Henley, Elton John and many others).

They capped off with the teenpop (i.e. New Kids on the Block and Milli Vanilli) of 1989 and 1990, including the latter's lip syncing scandal.