D-TV is a music video television series produced by Charles Braverman[1] and edited by Ted Herrmann. Premiering on May 5, 1984 on the Disney Channel,[2] the series combined both classic and contemporary popular music with various footage of vintage animated shorts and feature films from The Walt Disney Company, created out of the trend of music videos on cable channel MTV, which inspired the name of this series.[3]
Content
Most songs used in the series were contemporary hits (e.g., "Kiss on My List" and "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates), though older songs like Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater" were also featured. These music videos were shown as filler material on the Disney Channel (which refrained from airing commercials at the time), as well as being the focus of several television specials. Home video collections were also released on VHS, Beta, CED Videodisc, and Laserdisc formats. After the first run of D-TV, in 1989, a second series was produced known as DTV².[4]
Theme music
The main title music, known as "RPM", was created in 1981 by a recording company called Network Music.[5] When the segments were shown individually on television, the title music used was from "Sunset Boulevard", also by Network Music.[6] In the show's opening, a cheese-like Moon zooms out to reveal a black background with blue musical notes. A silhouette of Mickey Mouse's head rises from the Moon, and it exits below the screen. The letter D (in the corporate Disney font) and the letters TV appear and zoom out to attach to the head. Finally, after a few seconds, the screen zooms into the silhouette of the head, which reveals several vintage Disney cartoon clips.
Home media
Many songs listed above were released on VHS, in five separate volumes. The first three volumes, entitled "Pop & Rock", "Rock, Rhythm & Blues", and "Golden Oldies", were released in late 1984, as part of Walt Disney Home Video's "Wrapped and Ready to Give" holiday promotion. In the Summer of 1985, two more volumes, "Love Songs" and "Groovin' For a '60s Afternoon", were released.
Television specials
Disney aired three DTV television specials on NBC in 1986 and 1987: DTV Valentine (Feb 14, 1986, re-titled DTV Romancin' in later airings), DTV Doggone Valentine (Feb 13, 1987), and DTV Monster Hits (Oct 30, 1987).
DTV Monster Hits was focused on Halloween-themed music and footage. It was also referred to as Disney's DTV Monster Hits by the show's narrator, Gary Owens. By this time, Hans Conried had died and the Magic Mirror, now credited at the end of the show as Man in the Magic Mirror, was played by Jeffrey Jones.
June Foray returned as the voice of Witch Hazel to dub new lines. These can be seen when she introduces Michael Jackson and during the segment where she is reading a book about scary stories, which is a segment lifted directly from a Disneyland episode, The Mad Hermit of Chimney Butte.
New lines for Donald Duck were dubbed during the Ghostbusters theme, where he says he's "not afraid of ghosts" is a new line.