Friday Night Videos, launched by NBC in July 1983, was one of the most notable network television responses to MTV's rise as a cultural force. While MTV had debuted two years earlier and was gradually spreading across cable systems, NBC's late-night offering brought music videos to a national broadcast audience who might otherwise have had no access to them, filling a gap during MTV's slower expansion across the United States.

The show was created by NBC executive Dick Ebersol, who drew on his experience with the network's earlier music programme Midnight Special and his standing as head of Saturday Night Live at the time. It debuted on 29 July 1983 at 12:30am ET as a 90-minute programme of videos introduced by off-screen announcers, later adding on-camera hosts in 1985, including stars such as Madonna and Ozzy Osbourne, and featuring an interactive "Video Vote" segment. As MTV became widely available on cable through the mid-1980s, the NBC show lost much of its purpose, though it continued in various forms until 2002.