It’s unattainable to overstate the influence MTV had when it launched in 1981. The daring new cable station captured the zeitgeist, placing the brand new medium of music movies on the forefront of popular culture. MTV additionally helped invent a brand-new on-air gig: the video jockey, a.okay.a. VJ, with 5 younger, charismatic hosts who launched movies and interviewed artists.

Through the years, MTV would cycle by means of many alternative VJs earlier than deprioritizing music video programming altogether — a lot to the chagrin of anybody who grew up with MTV in its earlier days. However these unique VJs — Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn — stay icons of the period.

Quinn et al weren’t simply the faces of MTV — additionally they turned real-life buddies, cohosting subsequent reveals collectively, and even coauthoring a tell-all e book, VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave, in 2013.

Right here’s a have a look at what occurred to the unique VJs who helped make MTV so particular.

Martha Quinn

Candy and perky Martha Quinn went straight from latest NYU graduate to MTV VJ, touchdown the job by means of a connection she’d made whereas wrapping up an internship on the radio station WNBC. She left MTV in 1986, however got here again in 1989, and in the end stayed with the channel till 1992.

Whereas on MTV, she dabbled in performing, enjoying Bobby Brady’s spouse on the Brady Bunch sequel collection The Bradys in 1990 and showing in a couple of episodes of Full Home. After she left the channel for good, she turned the cohost of Star Search in 1994 and a correspondent for The Early Present in 1999. She was additionally a spokesperson for Neutrogena all through the ’90s.

Like her colleagues, Quinn discovered a distinct segment in satellite tv for pc radio within the ’00s, internet hosting Martha Quinn’s Rewind in syndication in 2001 and transferring to SiriusXM in 2005. At Sirius, she hosted packages like Martha Quinn Presents: Gods of the Huge ’80s, ’80s on 8 and Martha Quinn Presents. She left the station in 2016, and have become a bunch for San Francisco’s KOSF.

Quinn was additionally featured in a 2007 laptop recreation, The ’80s Sport With Martha Quinn, and hosted a public tv present, The 80’s (My Music), in 2017.

As of late, Quinn will be heard because the host of The Martha Quinn Present on iHeartRadio. The present, which debuted in 2022, airs on 35 stations in varied cities.

In 2023, Quinn was identified with endometrial most cancers, and underwent remedy. She is presently in restoration.

In an interview, Quinn, now 65, remembered her MTV years fondly, saying, “Folks say to me, ‘Will you ever have a job as cool as being an unique MTV VJ?’ And the reply is clearly no. When am I ever going to have the possibility to be part of one thing groundbreaking and revolutionary like that? And you’ll’t be part of it on goal. We didn’t know that it was going to be revolutionary on the time.”

Nina Blackwood

Nina Blackwood initially studied performing however discovered her calling as an MTV VJ — a job she received when she responded to an advert for the then-new channel in Billboard journal. She stayed with the channel till 1986, and after leaving, she hosted the “Rock Report” for Leisure Tonight and from 1986 to 1988, she was the host of the music present Stable Gold.

Because the years went on, the raspy-voiced VJ moved from TV to radio, and she or he launched Nina Blackwood’s Completely 80’s in 1999. She then hosted one other fashionable radio program, Nina Blackwood’s New Wave Nation. She additionally acted every so often, showing onstage in The Vagina Monologues in 2003.

Within the ’00s, Blackwood discovered a brand new house on SiriusXM Radio, the place she turned the host of ’80s on 8 together with the opposite unique VJs. Presently, she and her fellow VJs host The Huge ’80s Prime 40 Countdown.

Trying again at her VJ years, Blackwood, now 69, stated, “I can communicate for all of us after I say we didn’t assume we had been actually cool rock stars. All of us felt like regular people who had actually cool jobs! I by no means walked round with a ‘star’ angle. I used to be extra involved with doing a extremely good job and having credibility.”

Mark Goodman

Mark Goodman got here to MTV as a seasoned radio host, having began his profession with Philadelphia’s WMMR in 1978. He then moved to New York, the place he turned a bunch for WPLJ in 1980, however only a 12 months later he left the station to be one of many unique MTV VJs.

Goodman left MTV in 1987, and he hosted the reveals Match TV and Illinois Instantaneous Riches within the ’90s. He additionally labored for quite a lot of completely different radio stations all through the last decade, together with the favored California rock station KROQ.

Goodman was an early adopter when it got here to web radio, and he oversaw music programming for Soundbreak.com in 1999. After the dot-com bubble burst, he moved to SiriusXM, and has been with them since 2004, internet hosting packages like ’80s on 8, Basic Rewind and The Spectrum.

Exterior of his lengthy radio profession, Goodman labored as a music supervisor for Determined Housewives and made frequent appearances on VH1 and VH1 Basic within the aughts.

Goodman, now 71, recalled the early years of MTV as enjoyable but chaotic, given the demanding schedule, and spoke of the lasting bonds he made, explaining, “We began off probably not realizing one another and by the point we moved from that studio the crew and the VJs had been like household or Vietnam vets who’d shared the identical terrifying expertise. The VJs and far of the crew are nonetheless buddies to today.”

Alan Hunter

Alan Hunter studied performing, and had occasional theater roles earlier than becoming a member of MTV. In 1980, he had a job within the music video for David Bowie’s “Style” a 12 months earlier than MTV launched. After an opportunity assembly with MTV’s CEO, he turned a VJ, and stayed with the channel till 1987.

Hunter then relocated from New York to L.A., and acted in commercials and TV pilots. An Alabama native, he moved again to his hometown in Birmingham within the ’90s, and began a movie firm there, Hunter Movies, in addition to opening an leisure venue, WorkPlay, together with his brothers. Hunter Movies produced a lot of shorts and unbiased films, and Hunter additionally cofounded the Sidewalk Movie Competition in Birmingham, and has been energetic within the metropolis’s movie group.

Within the ’00s, Hunter turned a TV host for Encore and Starz, and since 2004, he’s been on SiriusXM’s ’80s on 8 together with his fellow VJs. He can be heard on Basic Rewind and different nostalgic packages on the station.

Hunter, now 67, admitted he was initially a bit intimidated by a few of the different VJs who got here to the job with extra music business expertise, and stated, “I approached it from the standpoint of a fan, and let my enthusiasm come by means of . . . That was the one course I may go . . . be obsessed with it and take a little bit of a quirkier method.”

J.J. Jackson

J.J. Jackson was the oldest and most skilled of the unique MTV VJs, having began his radio profession at Boston’s WBCN within the ’60s. He then moved to the L.A. station KLOS, the place he stayed for 10 years and have become referred to as one of many few Black DJs at a rock station. After that he labored on TV as a music reporter for ABC’s L.A. affiliate channel, which led him to get the VJ job.

After leaving MTV in 1986, Jackson went again to radio, working for KROQ and KEDG in L.A, and returned to KLOS, the station he hosted for in his pre-MTV days. From 1995 to 2002, he hosted The Beatle Years, which was nationally syndicated.

Jackson handed away from a coronary heart assault at age 62 in 2004. Trying again at his MTV years in 1998, the music business veteran stated, “I believed it might be a pleasant promotional software, however I by no means knew it might get to be this monster factor.”