Some people don't believe me when I tell them that at one time, MTV never played commercials. Not only did they play nothing but music videos, they did it commercial free! In the early days of cable, the fact that you PAID for cable was how MTV and other cable channels made money. Then they figured out that they could play commercials, charge for cable and people would still watch. That sucked!
I probably learned a lot from watching MTV, because I used to watch it all the time. ALL the time. My friends and I would sit for hour until the videos started to repeat. I had one rule: I never watched MTV while I ate. I don't remember why I had that rule, I just did.
Here's something I learned from MTV that I still remember and do to this day. They ran an ad in the early 90s that told us when spill something, use a rag to clean it up. Not paper towel. I thought of this last night when I spilled some iced-tea. I grabbed the dish rag out of the sink and used that instead. Still good advice nearly 30 years later. That tagline still echos in my head: "Use a rag."
And believe it or not, I was even able to find the original ad on YouTube. It's short. 20 seconds. Take a look.