''Video Jukebox'' was an American television program which aired from 1981 to 1986 on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...

. It was a monthly series that showcased

music videos A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...

from the popular recording artists of the time such as

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, Culture Club,

Linda Ronstadt Linda Maria Ronstadt (born July 15, 1946) is a retired American singer who performed and recorded in diverse genres including rock, country, light opera, the Great American Songbook, and Latin. She has earned 11 Grammy Awards, three American M ...

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Kim Wilde Kim Wilde (born Kim Smith, 18 November 1960) is an English pop singer, DJ and television presenter. She first saw success in 1981 with her debut single "Kids in America", which peaked at No. 2 in the UK. In 1983, she received the Brit Award f ...

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, Blondie, Rush, and

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. A typical episode of ''Video Jukebox'' consisted of seven or eight music videos and lasted roughly 30 minutes, and the lineup changed in the middle of each month. During the late 1970s (and before the

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

network debuted), HBO was already airing one or two music videos (or "promotional clips" as they were known at the time) as filler in between their feature films and other series. These short clips also carried the ''Video Jukebox'' moniker. When ''Video Jukebox'' premiered as a half-hour series in December 1981, HBO was reaching more households than MTV (which had been launched only four months earlier), so for about a year until MTV caught up to HBO's subscriber count, a video that aired on ''Video Jukebox'' may have received more exposure there than it would on MTV. The series had no host until September 1985, when

Dennis Elsas Dennis Elsas is an American disc jockey in New York City, whose radio and voiceover career has spanned 50 years, most notably his more than 25 years at WNEW-FM in New York City, where he debuted on July 11, 1971. He also served as music director ...

was brought on as voiceover talent, introducing the videos that were shown on the program. Elsas served as host of ''Video Jukebox'' until its final airing on December 5, 1986. At the peak of its popularity in the mid-1980s, ''Video Jukebox'' spawned many "special editions", including ''Christmas Jukebox'', ''Country Jukebox'', ''Comedy Jukebox'', ''Heavy Metal Jukebox'', ''Sixties Jukebox'', and other editions featuring songs from movies and

Grammy The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...

winners.''HBO Guides''

References

See also