Dial MTV was the MTV program that let viewers request music videos by calling a telephone hotline.
The program premiered in 1986 as an interactive countdown show. Viewers called MTV’s phone line to request videos, and the channel used those requests to shape the broadcast playlist. This gave the audience a more direct role in programming than a conventional music-video rotation.
Dial MTV was hosted by MTV video jockeys including Nina Blackwood, Martha Quinn, and Adam Curry. It became part of MTV’s late-1980s effort to make viewers feel personally connected to the channel and its on-air personalities.
Dial MTV is often mixed up with Total Request Live, which premiered more than a decade later in 1998 and became MTV’s best-known viewer-request countdown. Dial MTV belongs to the earlier period when telephone voting and requests were central to MTV’s interactive identity.