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Forum » Retro T.V. & Movies » Friday Night Videos
Vaporman87
It was one of those shows you made sure to set some time aside for. For a fan of music videos, Friday Night Videos was like the football game on Sunday is to football fans. Sure, we had MTV (if you could get it) at the time and that gave us videos non-stop, but there was just something magical about a show that only came around once a week and introduced brand new videos you hadn't seen just yet. I know that probably the video I always hoped to see each week was Take On Me by A-ha, only because of how unique it was and the fact that the song was so catchy. But the whole show was fun and different in comparison to MTV.


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vkimo
I've never seen this, it played music videos which are always the same across stations so I assume this had great in between the videos segments.
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Vaporman87
They would often have guest hosts doing the in-between stuff. A lot of people didn't have cable/satellite MTV in the early 80's, so this WAS MTV for those people. For me, I just liked the format.
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pikachulover
I used to watch the successor of this show Friday Night.
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eddstarr
I have tried for years to explain to guys outside the Seattle area what it was like to live here back in the 80's and 90's - no one believes me!

The Seattle area had 3 independent TV stations when I moved in 1980. By 1985 these stations came alive on Friday nights trying to outdo each other covering Seattle's growing music scene.

The network affiliate stations were not willing to be left out. The NBC affiliate, KING-TV 5, often preempted network scheduled shows to run live music from around the area - much of it flat-out wonderful!

But few shows, not even "Goodnight L.A.", could touch one of the best music shows I've ever seen - anywhere.

From 1989 to 1999, "Bomb Shelter Video" ran 90 minutes of some of the most amazing live performances ever captured in local dance clubs, all over the Seattle area.




Check this out - each week Bomb Shelter Video had an "open house" for music fans to walk into the studio and share any homemade videos of favorite bands from the local scene. Then the Bomb Shelter film team would select good bands and drop-in to a local club and film live for the Friday night broadcast. 

In some cases music fans with a track record of catching hot, new talent would be given "loaner" video recording equipment and their freelance discoveries would air on the show as time allowed.

Here's one of the show's intros:




And remember, Bomb Shelter was just one of at least three popular local music shows. NBC's Saturday Night Live had a difficult time keeping Seattle tuned in. There was simply too much good stuff on air in the Pacific Northwest.

Oh yes, this was back when Seattle local television introduced Bill Nye to a national audience with a comedy show that sometimes drew a larger audience than NBC's SNL:


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