I walked into MTV’s offices at 1775 Broadway in May 1987, having been hired as a producer to create and develop a weekly show for the MTV News department.

I got the job in part because I pitched an idea: If MTV News could earn the viewers trust by bringing more insight into the music they loved, bringing them closer to the musicians that influenced them and reporting on the triumphs and setbacks of those musicians, an audience would build for a brand-new news show that they would look forward to watching each week.

I knew that once we formed an ongoing relationship with the viewers — earned over years of relentless effort and building trust — that we could expand our storytelling outside of music as well, into the subjects that impacted the lives of young people.

I was 22 years old.

Over the summer of 1987, I started working with the small, dedicated MTV News team that had joined before me: Michael Shore, Stu Cohn, John Norris, Patrick Byrnes and Alisa Bellettini. I presented ideas to my bosses, Doug Herzog and Linda Corradina, about the new show that I would produce that would ultimately become “The Week In Rock.”