Vincent Cafarelli, Alan Goodman, Candy Kugel, Buzz Potamkin, Fred Seibert.
I’m particularly proud of this piece, because, unusually for me, it comes directly from an idea I had, rather than one I mid-wifed.
After a few false starts, my career in animation really began here. In 1981, after my childhood friend (and his associates) designed the logo for the network no one had ever heard of yet, we were batting around ideas for the “top of the hour” (where the top music videos in an hour would be billboarded). It hadn’t escaped me how conceited we were (rock’n'roll changed the world, and our network was going to change television forever!) and I thought maybe we could appropriate the most famous television event in the world (in the world, mind you, for this tiny, American, cable TV venture) for our nefarious, or at least frivolous, purposes.
My mentor had already identified NASA footage as very cool and very free (believe it or not, our government agrees that we, the people, own all images and film from NASA missions in space). Alan and I brought a bunch of 4×5″ transparencies (and a music track by Elias Arts to Buzz Potamkin and his team (directors Candy Kugel & Vincent Cafarelli, assistant JJ Sedelmaier, producer David Sameth) at his new company Buzzco.
And an icon, and a long relationship, was born.
–Fred
![Indy Mogul (alt) poster [comp]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3182/3027776092_f8c8836fc0.jpg)
![Threadbanger poster [comp]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/3027662798_915b90d3fb.jpg)
![Next New Networks INKY poster [comp]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3032/2878798303_57ff8570d3.jpg)
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On October 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
These promos are the second greatest thing about the early days of MTV, second only to Martha Quinn.
On October 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Aw man, this brings back memories. When I was but a wee lad, and my mum was doing chores around the house, she would stick MTV on, and the likes of Sledgehammer, Reet Petit and all these idents would be forever installed into my brain, so these probably had something to do with my love for animation now. Classic TV.
On October 27th, 2006 at 12:00 am
This was the stuff of legends! Before then, station/network ID’s were mostly static (a telop slide projected into a camera was the trick in those days), or had some animation that didn’t change at all, and they kept using the same logo for a season or so before they might change the layout/format for the next. MTV changed all that, leading to the many interesting ideas cable networks had in doing ID’s for the rest of the decade.