At Probe, owner Mark Hundahl was smart enough to resist until it became ubiquitous

Coauthored with Stewart Barkal

First published in Frontiers Newsmagazine, January 22, 1986

Not available online, but check out Frontiers. Click the image

American television audiences were treated to a new passive entertainment thrill in 1980 with two 2-hour prime-time TV specials entitled “The Radio Picture Show.” Produced by Mark Hundahl, one of the owners of Probe, “The Radio Picture Show” for the first time blended currently popular music with totally new combinations of visual images and transmitted them to living rooms across the country, sweeping the ratings and spawning a host of imitators, the most successful of which has been the Time-Life, Inc. creation Music-Television (MTV), now comparable to Muzak in its sales and audience size.

It took almost two years for the leading gay dance clubs (which, generally, are trend-setters for all dance clubs and discotheques) to catch on to this new entertainment medium.