The History of MTV

In 1975, Queen released a video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” on Top of the Pops, amazing audiences with then then-novel video medium. In 1977, Michael Nesmith of The Monkees released a cinematic video for the song “Rio.” Then in 1979, American Express purchased half of Warner Cable Corporation and formed Warner-American Express Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC). The company wanted to target teenagers — a then-overlooked demographic — with their programming. An executive named John Lack was tasked with developing the programming and is credited with shepherding MTV into existence. It was decided that the new channel would rely on promotional music videos obtained from record labels for free and VJs (video jockeys) would play them on random rotation interspersed with teen-focused advertisements in a radio-style broadcast strategy. On August 1, 1981, MTV launched with the words, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” spoken by Lack himself, followed by purposefully bombastic footage of the the first Space Shuttle launch countdown for Columbia, the launch of Apollo 11, and an image of an astronaut placing an MTV flag on the Moon. The first music video played on MTV was the Buggle’s “Video Killed the Radio Star.” This was followed by just over 100 different music videos that were played throughout the first 24 hours of MTV's existence. The first female artist featured on the channel was Pat Bentar. At first, the channel's distribution was limited to New Jersey, but it soon grew in popularity, in part because MTV ran ads encouraging people to request the channel from their cable providers. Musicians were enamored with the new art form and began experimenting with making music videos. However, MTV notably lacked diversity. During an interview with MTV, David Bowie brought up the lack of Black artists featured on the channel, but MTV was slow to change. Finally, the channel featured its first music video by a Black artist — it was the video for “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson. Things began to change with the immense success of Michael Jackson’s epic video for “Thriller,” but it wasn’t until 1988 that Yo! MTV Raps premiered and the first rap and hip-hop videos were featured on the channel. The craze around music videos began to wear off in the 1990s, so MTV began running various animated programs and reality shows centered around teens, including The Real World, which debuted in 1992, Beavis and Butt-Head, which debuted in 1993, and Daria, which premiered in 1997. With the launch of YouTube in 2005, music videos became easily accessible on demand for the first time and MTV increasingly leaned into reality shows rather than music-focused programming. For example, the channel ended their beloved live music show MTV Unplugged in 1999, which had debuted just 10 years prior and produced some truly iconic performances by musical acts like Nirvana and Eric Clapton. During its heyday, MTV helped to influence and define youth culture and played a key role in distributing music videos and launching new artists into the public consciousness. While it is not nearly as influential today, MTV’s legacy lives on in the popularity of music videos and the channel's very name is still strongly associated with pop culture.