Restless native: MTV, Hughes Stadium, College Days, Broncos' practice

Friday, December 6, 2024

MTV, Hughes Stadium, College Days, Broncos' practice

In my mind and in my carWe can't rewind we've gone too farPictures came and broke your heartPut the blame on VCR

Songwriters: Bruce Woolley / Geoffrey Downes / Trevor Charles Horn

Video killed the radio star

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

In 1981, there was a big TV room on the Shields side of Ingersoll Hall, near the Post Office, as it continued on toward the dining hall. At any time of the day, there would be dozens of students lounging on the nondescript furniture (it looked a little like early Holiday Inn fashion) watching MTV videos to avoid actual studying, and contemplating Buggles songs and images of a montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And most of the College Days revelry was over near the Lagoon, where the 30-foot Hamm's Bear sold beer by the bucket.

Ingersoll Hall looks pretty much the same as it did then, but I am pretty sure you can't watch Elway and the rest of the Broncos on their practice field there on the North side, out your dorm window. But it is a lot closer to the CSU stadium.

I wouldn't have to get a ride out there to Hughes now to hawk beers. But I would still be able to make it to my other workstudy jobs at Molby and South College Gym, and the Fieldhouse, (where my father claimed his dorm room was in the 1940s). And the Collegian gig would be in the same vicinity of Lory Student Center, though the original location near the stairs on the North Side was flooded out in 1997 deluge.

Greg Luft, head of the Department of Journalism and Media Communication, was faculty advisor to the campus television station CTV at the time. He recalled seeing aerial footage of the flooded areas on TV and a window well at his home filling up with water. He ended up working with news organizations that gathered near the mobile homes where four fatalities occurred, as the flood made national news.

When Luft was allowed back on campus after the flood, he visited the CTV offices on the north side of the Lory Student Center and found a mess.

“Everything was washed up against the north wall,” Luft said. “There was mud and water on the floor, and all of the electronics were full of mud. Everything that was electronic was gone.”

He said the water level in the basement of the Bookstore reached two-thirds of the way to the ceiling, and he has a vivid memory of watching crews tossing all of CTV’s damaged furniture and equipment in huge garbage containers. Later that fall, the CBS Denver television station KCNC provided a truckload of old equipment to CTV, and “saved CTV for the fall semester.”

Sonny Lubick Field at Hughes Stadium was an outdoor college football stadium located out near Horsetooth Reservoir. It was the home field of the Colorado State Rams of the Mountain West Conference from 1968 through 2016; the team moved in 2017 to the new on-campus Colorado State Stadium. But to date: The Rolling Stones have not played the new digs on campus.

And as far as "College Days": An estimated 6,000 people gathered on the western edge of campus as the university-sponsored concerts and events came to an end April 24 and 25, 1987 — first at Baystone, then outside the Cambridge House Apartments. The damage they left was enough for the university and many students to support the end of College Days.

Rolling Stones at Hughes Stadium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQr4LsvLpHQ

Today Ingersoll Hall, on the south side of campus is home to 415 students. This hall features community-style double rooms (residents in each corridor share a community bathroom), a renovated large student community kitchen, and is within a few minutes of Ram’s Horn Dining Center.

MTV was launched on Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m, under the ownership of the Warner-American Express Satellite Entertainment Company. On June 25, 1984, Warner Communications spun-off Nickelodeon, MTV into a new public corporation called MTV Networks.Warner would later acquire American Express' 50% stake the following year. From August 27, 1985 to May 20, 1986, Warner would sell 31%, and later, 69% of MTV Networks to Viacom.

The other day, I fresh-cut a Christmas tree, and netted it, for a guy that works for Food Service at Colorado State University. He was telling me about it now being possible for robots to deliver items from one of the only three Residential Dining Centers, (He was talking particularly of Ram's Horn).