Robert Sam Anson ‘67, one of the founding editors of The Observer in the 1960s and now a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, compiled an oral history of MTV that ran through 29 pages in the magazine’s November 2000 issue.
Anson interviewed 87 people who played roles in the August 1981 launching of MTV. He traces the station from its early days as just an idea to its fights with cable operators who didn’t want “this crap coming in corrupting our children,” to its broadening influence when such musicians as Brian Setzer and Billy Idol hit it big because their videos aired. Included among those interviewed is Jack Schneider ’48, former chief of the CBS broadcast group and a Notre Dame life trustee.