History of MTV

MTV

MTV's launch date was on August 1st 1981 and it played a range of songs such as:

'Video Killed The Radiostar - The Buggles'

'In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins'

'Fashion - David Bowie'

'She Won't Dance With Me - Rod Stewart'

On August 1st 1981 launched with the words 'Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll' from John Lack and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia and of the launch of Apollo 11, this happened earlier in the year and was therefore massive then. Then in come he MTV theme music with footage of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, MTV used this as conceit to portray it as the most famous moment in television history. The first video was 'Video Killed The Radiostar' by the Buggles and then in between each video the viewers would see a blank black screen while an employee at MTV would insert the next video.

The impact of MTV was almost immediate. This was shown after a couple of months when records stores were selling tracks which weren't being played on radio stations.

Slogans such as "I want my MTV" and "MTV is here" in the eighties became embedded in public thought and so MTV grew in popularity. MTV has been referenced countless times in popular culture by musicians, other TV channels and television programmes, films, and books.

Today however MTV is more popular for it's reality TV shows like 'Jersey Shore' and '16 and Pregnant'. MTV has smaller sister channels today to promote music videos like MTV Base, MTV Dance, MTV Rocks and MTV Classic.