1st August 1981: The launch of cable music television channel MTV

The origins of MTV lay in the Warner Cable channel ‘Sight on Sound’ that had been broadcast on the experimental two-way QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio since 1977. Exclusively showing concert footage and music programs, viewers of the channel could vote for their favourite content to be shown. Two years later, on the youth-oriented Nickelodeon channel, music videos became the focus of the PopClips program and in the summer of 1981 significant market research led to the two concepts morphing into MTV. Originally broadcast from a studio in New Jersey, MTV launched at 12:01am with the words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll’. This was followed by the music video for The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star", a prophetic message as MTV soon grew to become a vital marketing weapon for record companies. Music videos were intercut with segments hosted by ‘veejays’ or ‘video jockeys’, but in the first week the station was limited to barely 80 songs on rotation due to a shortage of promotional videos at the time. As a result, MTV’s early output featured a lot of British bands since they already had a tradition of creating music videos for the weekly BBC pop music show Top of the Pops. Nevertheless, American record companies soon began investing in video production due to the positive impact of the station on music sales. MTV soon received criticism for a lack of black artists in the station’s rotation. While the executives argued that MTV was established to play album-oriented rock, which was predominantly produced by white male artists, they eventually relented and from 1984 it became more common to see videos by people of color while MTV grew to become a cultural behemoth.

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