The Big 80's was a series of music video

Music video

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

s broadcast on VH1

VH1

VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...

 starting in 1994 and sporadically airing until 2000. The show ran for 90 minutes.

Format

The main content of The Big 80's was music videos made between 1980 and 1989 with an occasional 1990 video. The genres were New Wave, Hair Rock and pop, playing videos from its popular artists. Sometimes hosts would inform viewers about CD releases and personal facts about musicians.

Loss of popularity

The show was extremely popular to begin with, but lost popularity as VH1 programmers decided to limit the videos shown in the series to songs that had had major popularity, chart toppings and sales, turning the show into virtual repeats by the end of its third month. In 1995, some additional videos were added to the lineup. The Big 80's regained a little popularity but after a few months, once again the audience declined because of the repeated videos. The show continued until 2000.

More of the Big 80's

More of the Big 80's was first broadcast in 1997, trying to play more videos. The show was hosted by Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar

Pat Benatar is an American singer and four-time Grammy winner. She had considerable commercial success particularly in the United States...

 and Neil Giraldo. The show lost popularity as The Big 80's had done and also ceased in 2000.

The show later moved to VH1 Classic

VH1 Classic

VH1 Classic is a television network, launched on May 8, 2000. It is operated as part of MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom and primarily features music videos and concert footage from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, though it formerly included a wider range of genres and time periods...

and is now called We Are The 80's.

CD releases

A series of nine music CDs were released by VH1 starting, in 1996, with "VH1: The Big 80's" and continuing with "VH1: More of The Big 80's", "VH1: The Big 80's The Big Movies", "VH1: The Big 80's Big Hair", "VH1: The Big 80's Power Ballads", "VH1: The Big 80's Arena Rock", "VH1: The Big 80's Pop", "VH1: The Big 80's Big Hair, Vol. 2" and finally with "VH1: The Big 80's Christmas" in 2001. They are still sold on Amazon.com.

External links

• More of the Big 80's on IMDb