You kids with your '80s nostalgia may think the MTV of 25 years ago was all Day-Glo and Duran Duran, but the truth is the cool years were tragically brief. MTV did debut with a fairly exclusive new wave bent — mostly because no one but David Bowie and Devo even made music videos before 1981 — but the channel soon turned into a Quiet Riot/Madonna/Richard Marx blah-fest. Luckily, if you had cable, you also had USA Network. Back then, USA offered barely more than rerun recycling, and left its late-night weekend programming to a show called Night Flight. For four hours every Friday and Saturday, the kookiest short films, dub parodies, and alt-music videos (“Dog Police,” anyone?) made their way into the '80s teenage consciousness. Tonight, Stuart Shapiro, the creator of Night Flight (which, in 1988, USA replaced with Gilbert Gottfried/Rhonda Shear B-movie meltdown Up All Night), appears for a Q&A, following a selection of the series' best moments.

Thu., Aug. 27, 8 p.m., 2009

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