MTV co-founder speaks at Tufts

MEDFORD. MTV Co-founder Tom Freston remembers when the channel played nothing but music.

“It was a wild ride to work there,” he said during a lecture on new media and the birth of MTV at Tufts University last week. “It’s hard to believe now, but it was a revolutionary thing when it first came out.”

Even after the channel gained popularity, cable companies were hesitant. The slogan “I want my MTV” was developed as an appeal to audiences to request that their providers keep the channel.

Freston’s lecture detailed the evolution of media since the popularization of the television.  He also recalled being in Berlin in 1972, where he “saw Rod Stewart playing guitar with these two beautiful blondes, and I realized I was seeing my first music video.”

Freston called HBO and cable television “a Trojan horse with a cornucopia of all these new media.” He said that the media revolution really started in around 1980.