Boston's V66

[Clifford Darling]

The Boston market had it's own "MTV" for a short time in the '80s. It was called V66. V for Video and 66 for the UHF frequency it was assigned. V66 debuted in the winter of 1985. You could tune in to channel 66 and see a video channel much in the style of early MTV. They had local DJs and VJs and it was sort of a radio station with pictures, as was MTV when it started.

V66 played the same hits you saw on MTV, but it did something great for the Boston music scene. V66 played videos by local bands, such as New Man, Lizzy Borden and the Axes, O Positive, Rick Berlin, The Lines, Ball + Pivot, and 'Til Tuesday ("Voices Carry" was a national hit by then, but the band was still very much Boston).

It was an interesting phenomenon for Lizzy to get the same exposure as Madonna, she was still a coat check girl at the Metro!

It was fun while it lasted. The wheels came off the thing pretty quick. A scant two years later V66 was taken over by a home-shopping network. It died a slow, painful death too! It wasn't like one day there was no more V66, just home shopping. Home shopping started part-time and gradually took over. In the spring of '87, V66 was down to broadcasting a couple of hours a day, and by summer it was all gone. All you saw on channel 66 was rhinestone necklaces and steak knives!
[:(]

I was never quite clear on why V66 failed. It seemed to have plenty of publicity and devoted viewers. The official story was that it did not generate enough ad revenue. V66 could not sustain itself and it could not compete with Viacom. I suspect there might have been some strong-arming by MTV/VH1, but I've got no proof.

These days V66 seems all but forgotten except among music geeks from Boston and the veteran musicians who had their videos broadcast on V66!

V66: Big in Back Bay!
V66: Awesome in Andover!
V66: Love it in Lincoln!

Those were the days...

Tidbit about V66 on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqouGVGNdtg

[SomebodySomewhere]

The only place I ever saw New Man's "Bad Boys" and The Drive's "Doin' the Countdown." Not well-made videos, to say the least, but I loved the songs. Ball and Pivot's "Down" was on there every 30 minutes, too. That's probably what made me sick of it. I thought it went under at the end of '86. I don't remember watching it after that. I lost interest in the local crud pretty quickly after it died.

Remember the first season of "Big Brother" with Ian O'Malley serving no purpose whatsoever? I was, like, hey, he finally made it to the big time. Then they fired him after a couple weeks and he slunk right back to obscurity.

[Clifford Darling]

Somebody:

You're right. V66 shriveled up and died in late 1986, smothered by that miserable home shopping channel. It's hard to believe its reign was so brief! On the other hand, it was on an altogether dying frequency--UHF. How long could it have survived?

I agree about "local crud." I have always found the Boston scene to be very provincial and dull. Then again, I guess you could say I always had more artsy-fartsy tastes, which is why I can only talk about pop music on message boards such as this one. My knowledge of rock music is fossilized and the record ends in 1990 with a steep drop off. Nirvana and Pearl Jam were just not my thing!

Even if V66 had survived into the '90s, I can't say I would have been watching it any more than I was watching MTV.

[SomebodySomewhere]

Garage rock wasn't my thing. Particularly garage rock with no melodies or hooks. Unfortunately, that was Boston's thing. And it knocked every local artist who dared to have melodies and hooks right off the radio. Then in the late '80s came roots rock. Oh God.

Other than the Bosstones and Vasco Da Gama, I avoided Boston music like the plague after 1987. I was there for a few years into the '90s, and I couldn't name you one single local hit from that decade. Hell, I don't think I can name 5 local bands from the '90s.