By Tim Jackson

“V66 is a piece of broadcast history that a lot of people don’t know about. I’m proud to be the person to tell its story.”

Life On the V: The Story of V66 documents the history of a little-known Boston-area music video TV channel. It came along at a time when there were record stores, alternative weeklies, and only three major networks dominated the airwaves. In 1985, John Garabedian, who later was in a notable show called Open House Party, teamed up with fellow legendary radio personality Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg to start up a 24-hour Boston-area music video station that became known as “V66.” It was modeled on MTV’s all-video format, but the effort just lasted a year.

I spoke with filmmaker Eric Green, who chronicles the station’s brief history in his documentary Life On the V: The Story of V66, which screens on February 27 at the Somerville Theater.

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The Arts Fuse: What led you to this project?

Eric Green: I was a kid about eight or nine years old and I was just learning about music and getting into what was popular at the time. V66 came along and I didn’t have cable or anything. I could watch it on UHF TV when I visited my dad. It was great for someone just learning about music. They played so many kinds of rock music. It was exciting that it was local and live.

Many years later, I was working at the Fuse TV Channel, a national cable TV channel (note: it was originally launched in 1994 as MuchMusic USA). They played 24 hours of music videos at the time. I saw firsthand in the 2000s the way that a music channel was run. They were doing things that it took years for MTV to do, such as incorporating music shows as opposed to just a stream of music videos. The subject of V66 came up in a conversation one day and it unearthed memories. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time.

I went home that night and did a quick Google search. I saw more than a few message boards of people with detailed memories about the VJs and how the station was so different because it didn’t play what was played elsewhere at the time. As I went down that rabbit hole, I started to see how this could all come together as a documentary showing what the channel was doing. And to put that in the context of a digital age where you get everything you want, whenever you want it. The idea of an early independent channel was so intriguing that I started to track down various musicians, employees, and people who were on that channel. It was very much fan driven at first, but then people began sending us footage. These were often VHS tapes found in their closets. We were able to piece these together to use in the narrative. I’ve always been fascinated by stories that haven’t been told but should be told. This is a piece of broadcast history that a lot of people didn’t know about. I’m proud to be the person to tell its story.

AF: And where was this channel located?

Green: It was a UHF TV channel on the TV dial above 56 and below 68. The channel was already there and broadcasting. John Garabedian had an FCC license that nobody had been using, and he wanted to bring his experience from radio on television. At the time, Boston was a great TV market, even for smaller TV stations like 25 and 56. Cable had penetrated only about 25 or 35 percent of New England, so if you were excited about something, like Michael Jackson‘s Thriller and MTV, and they weren’t offered, then you were out of luck. There were only about 12 options on your TV, so an additional one was exciting in itself. And the fact that it was all about this cultural phenomenon of music videos was even more exciting.

It was also a channel that was all about connecting with the community, with an emphasis on local music and what was happening in Boston. People also didn’t have to pay extra for it. If you didn’t have cable offered in your town — or you didn’t feel like paying money for cable — it was a godsend.

AF: What years did the station broadcast?

Green: February 12, 1985, to September 21, 1986. Back then you had channels 4, 5, and 7 which were the local network affiliates, and channel 2, which is PBS. If you had your rabbit ears, you might get stations from Rhode Island or New Hampshire or somewhere else. There were UHF channels 25, 38 and also 44, which was a PBS station. Then there was 56 and 68. V66 was a brand new channel masterminded by John Garabedian, who partnered with Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg. They had affiliations with WBCN and Kiss 108. They would also apply their experience of working in Top 40 radio, and also with the biggest rock stations in Boston at that time. Given their radio background, it is not surprising that they wanted a connection with the community. That made V66 a viewer-driven channel, including live callers who requested what was played.

AF: They would take calls at the TV station?

Green: Yeah, that was exciting — it was done the way the radio station was set up. Listeners could call in, talk to the VJ, and they would play records on the fly. And this was live. There was no five second delay — it was really live on the air, so some cuss words would slip in accidentally. But you could call the DJs on the air and request any music video from the previous five years and they could play it on the spot. The idea was that, from a technology standpoint, to set up the TV station along the lines of a radio station. At V66, they could just play any video that was in their system.

AF: Aside from callers, who was responsible for programming?

Green: Radio veteran Roxy Myzal was music director and David Beadle was the director of programming, but it was very much viewer-driven, committed to playing what was popular at the time. You could have a Van Halen video followed by a locally produced video. That was a boost for local bands. You could make a music video if you had a little bit of money or could take advantage of the video equipment at a local access station.

One example is the band Extreme. They partnered with Scott Kalvert, a very ambitious Emerson film student who went on to be a major music video director. He did videos for LL Cool J, Cyndi Lauper, Snoop Dog, and many others. He also directed Basketball Diaries in 1995. That Extreme video got into major rotation; eventually the band landed a major record contract.

Also, the Del Fuegos had some very good music videos and they were embraced by V66 and went on to score a nice career. They made endless appearances on the channel. The Del Fuegos said that they began to see a bigger turnout at their shows after their videos were seen on V66.

At the time there were a lot of good rock stations, plenty of good venues, and great rock press. V66 just added television to that mix and it was free, a great benefit for bands who had very little money.

AF: Was it difficult to secure national music videos?

Green:No, the bands welcomed it. A lot of times when bands would come through town to do some press, or if they were just in the area, they would stop by the station. If they were doing a concert at the Worcester Centrum they would often stop by. It was right off the Mass Pike.

AF: Along with music videos, what did V66 program?

Green: It was a little like radio coverage. They did live remotes from local campuses. They did some live concerts in the area. They had an affiliation with Club Metro. As I understand it, Prince performed a secret concert at the Metro and they were there for that. They covered Aerosmith’s big concert at Lynn’s Manning Bowl via a live broadcast. They also had video face-offs where they would play one video against another and viewers would pick a winner for the week or the day.

AF: How long did it take you to accumulate all of the material you needed?

Green: We started development around 2007 and production around 2008, with editing in full swing by 2010. We had the premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston in 2014.

And we also had to work with a legal team on fair use issues. I’m not a lawyer, but decisions came down to what we were showing, in what way, and how much of it we were presenting.

AF: Why did it fail after only a year?

Green: They learned a lesson the hard way, the same one learned by VH1. The music video wasn’t enough to sustain a TV channel. Ratings are recorded in 30- and 60-minute durations. If people liked the music videos they would stay at the station, but if they didn’t, they would move elsewhere. That affected ratings. V66 tried to do a sports show, to carry some syndicated shows, like Soul Train. Somebody even did a wrestling show for a while, but they hadn’t really budgeted to produce shows of that nature. After a little more than a year, they had to figure out their options for the future. Garabedian was humble enough to realize that he owed it to his investors to do what was best for them. He looked at all the options, and sold the space on the dial to the Home Shopping Channel, which is based out of Florida. They were buying up TV channels around America. It was a sad day for music fans — instead of seeing their favorite music videos, they were watching people selling items they didn’t need.

AF: Do you think that the end of V66 dealt a significant blow to the Boston music community?

Green: Every few years someone goes out of business and everybody asks “what’s happening in the Boston music scene?” The fact is, Boston music is more than just one band or one venue. It’s a support system. After the demise of V66, cable penetration really improved around Boston. Interestingly, in ’88 or ’89, Kiss108 had a TV show for a short time on Channel 27 with David O’Leary. It was almost like a return to V66 — a very similar setup.

AF: So what is the status of music videos these days?

Green: Music videos have found their home online now. You can make a music video and put it on YouTube. Bigger artists are creating big hits with their videos. Really creative things are being done.

The music video itself has stood the test of time. It’s not going anywhere. But the idea of a locally owned independent TV station that did nothing but play videos — that’s a thing of the past. Video streaming platforms like VEVO on your Roku channel have become powerful. You have the option to go to your sub-channels, like the ’80s, the ’70s, the Y2K channels. There is Vimeo, Daily Motion, and iTunes — all of them now have music videos available.

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Side Note:

AF: I was actually in a band at the time with several music videos. The viewers voted one of mine the best video of the week.

Green: You did! I didn’t know that! What was the band?

AF: It was called the Young Rationals. I directed one video and the singer-songwriter directed one. We did pretty well partly thanks to V66. Of course, like everything else, they are both available on YouTube. Some attacked the one I directed as being too violent, though it was just meant as a film noir parody.

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Tim Jackson was an assistant professor of Digital Film and Video for 20 years. His music career in Boston began in the 1970s and includes some 20 groups, recordings, national and international tours, and contributions to film soundtracks. He studied theater and English as an undergraduate, and has also worked helter-skelter as an actor and member of SAG and AFTRA since the 1980s. He has directed three feature documentaries: Chaos and Order: Making American Theater about the American Repertory Theater; Radical Jesters, which profiles the practices of 11 interventionist artists and agit-prop performance groups; When Things Go Wrong: The Robin Lane Story. And two short films: Joan Walsh Anglund: Life in Story and Poem and The American Gurner. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. You can read more of his work on his blog.