'VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR', MTV'S FIRST VIDEO AIRED

MTV's Logo

Today, The Grandma has been watching MTV all day. It is one of her favourite TV channels because she loves music and MTV offers hours and hours of the best hits of the moment. MTV is an American pay television channel that was born on a day like today in 1981.

The Grandma wants to homage this classic American TV channel and she wants to talk about its beginning and its history. MTV was a pioneer during the 80's and today it is still a good TV channel that offers interesting contents.

Before watching MTV, The Grandma has continued studying her Ms. Excel course.

Chapter 8. Changes of Structure (II) (Spanish Version)

MTV, originally an initialism of Music Television, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of owner Viacom Media Networks, a division of Viacom, and is headquartered in New York City.

The channel was launched on August 1, 1981, and originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as video jockeys (VJs). At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily teenagers, particularly high school and college students.

Since its inception, MTV has toned down its music video programming significantly, and its programming now consists mainly of original reality, comedy and drama programming and some off-network syndicated programs and films, with limited music video programming in off-peak time periods.

More information: MTV

MTV had struggled with the secular decline of music-related subscription-based media. Its ratings had been said to be failing systematically, as younger viewers increasingly shift towards other media platforms, thus there was doubt of the lasting relevance of MTV towards young audiences.

MTV 1st Video Music Awards

In April 2016, then-appointed MTV president Sean Atkins announced plans to restore music programming to the channel. Under current MTV president Chris McCarthy, reality programming has once again become prominent. Most days are filled with extensive repeat marathons of Ridiculousness, Catfish, and episodes from the Jersey Shore and Teen Mom franchises.

MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the U.S. and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent, with approximately 90.6 million American households in the United States receiving the channel as of January 2016.

Several earlier concepts for music video-based television programming had been around since the early 1960s. The Beatles had used music videos to promote their records starting in the mid-1960s. The creative use of music videos within their 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, particularly the performance of the song Can't Buy Me Love, led MTV later on June 26, 1999, to honor the film's director Richard Lester with an award for basically inventing the music video.

In his book The Mason Williams FCC Rapport, author Mason Williams states that he pitched an idea to CBS for a television program that featured video-radio, where disc jockeys would play avant-garde art pieces set to music. CBS rejected the idea, but Williams premiered his own musical composition Classical Gas on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he was head writer.

More information: Everything 80's Podcast

In 1970, Philadelphia-based disc jockey Bob Whitney created The Now Explosion, a television series filmed in Atlanta and broadcast in syndication to other local television stations throughout the United States. The series featured promotional clips from various popular artists, but was canceled by its distributor in 1971.

Several music programs originating outside of the US, including Australia's Countdown and the United Kingdom's Top of the Pops, which had initially aired music videos in lieu of performances from artists who were not available to perform live, began to feature them regularly by the mid-1970s.

In 1974, Gary Van Haas, vice president of Televak Corporation, introduced a concept to distribute a music video channel to record stores across the United States, and promoted the channel, named Music Video TV, to distributors and retailers in a May 1974 issue of Billboard. The channel, which featured video disc jockeys, signed a deal with US Cable in 1978 to expand its audience from retail to cable television. The service was no longer active by the time MTV launched in 1981.

MTV's Advertisement

On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 AM Eastern Time, MTV was launched with the words Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll, spoken by John Lack and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia, which took place earlier that year, and of the launch of Apollo 11. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV theme song, a crunching rock tune composed by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over the American flag changed to show MTV's logo changing into various textures and designs.

MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a concept; Seibert said that they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong's One small step quote, but lawyers said that Armstrong owned his name and likeness and that he had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound. 

A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran at the top of every hour in various forms, from MTV's first day until it was pulled in early 1986 in the wake of the Challenger disaster.

More information: The Vintage News

The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles' Video Killed the Radio Star, originally only available to homes in New Jersey. This was followed by the video for Pat Benatar's You Better Run. The screen went black sporadically when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR.

MTV's lower third graphics that appeared near the beginning and end of music videos eventually used the recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years, but these graphics differed on MTV's first day of broadcast; they were set in a different typeface and included information such as the year and record label name.

MTV's effect was immediate in areas where the new music video channel was carried. Within two months, record stores in areas where MTV was available were selling music that local radio stations were not playing, such as Men at Work, Bow Wow Wow and the Human League. MTV sparked the Second British Invasion, with British acts, who had been accustomed to using music videos for half a decade, featuring heavily on the channel.

MTV & Michael Jackson

MTV targeted an audience between the ages of twelve to thirty-four. However, according to MTV's self conducted research over 50% of its audience was between twelve and twenty-four. Furthermore, this particular group watched MTV for an average of thirty minutes to two hours a day.

The original purpose of MTV was to be music television, playing music videos 24 hours a day and seven days a week, guided by on-air personalities known as VJs, or video jockeys. The original slogans of the channel were You'll never look at music the same way again, and On cable. In stereo.

During MTV's first few years on the air, very few black artists were included in rotation on the channel. The select few who were in MTV's rotation were Michael Jackson, Prince, Eddy Grant, Donna Summer, Joan Armatrading, Musical Youth, and Herbie Hancock.

The very first people of color to perform on MTV was the British band The Specials, which featured an integrated line-up of white and black musicians and vocalists. The Specials' video Rat Race was played as the 58th video on the station's first day of broadcasting.

In 1984, the channel produced its first MTV Video Music Awards show, or VMAs. The first award show, in 1984, was punctuated by a live performance by Madonna of Like A Virgin. The statuettes that are handed out at the Video Music Awards are of the MTV moonman, the channel's original image from its first broadcast in 1981. Presently, the Video Music Awards are MTV's most watched annual event.

More information: Music Interval Theory Academy

Around 1999 through 2001, as MTV aired fewer music videos throughout the day, it regularly aired compilation specials from its then 20-year history to look back on its roots. An all-encompassing special, MTV Uncensored, premiered in 1999 and was later released as a book.

From 1995 to 2000, MTV played 36.5% fewer music videos.

Prior to its finale in 2008, MTV's main source of music videos was Total Request Live, airing four times per week, featuring short clips of music videos along with VJs and guests. MTV was experimenting at the time with new ideas for music programs to replace the purpose of TRL but with a new format.

MTV again resurrected the long-running series MTV Unplugged in 2009 with performances from acts such as Adele and Paramore.

MTV & Bruce Springsteen

MTV launched a live talk show, It's On with Alexa Chung, on June 15, 2009. The host of the program, Alexa Chung, was described as a younger, more Web 2.0 version of Jimmy Fallon.

MTV's now-iconic logo was designed in 1981 by Manhattan Design, a collective formed by Frank Olinsky, Pat Gorman and Patty Rogoff, under the guidance of original creative director Fred Seibert. The block letter M was sketched by Rogoff, with the scribbled word TV spraypainted by Olinksky.

The primary variant of MTV's logo at the time had the M in yellow and the TV in red. But unlike most television networks' logos at the time, the logo was constantly branded with different colors, patterns and images on a variety of station IDs. The only constant aspects of MTV's logo at the time were its general shape and proportions, with everything else being dynamic.

MTV has edited a number of music videos to remove references to drugs, sex, violence, weapons, racism, homophobia, and/or advertising. Many music videos aired on the channel were either censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel.

More information: Logo My Way

Video Killed the Radio Star is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley in 1978. It was first recorded by Bruce Woolley and The Camera Club, with Thomas Dolby on keyboards, for their album English Garden, and later by British group the Buggles, consisting of Horn and Downes.

The track was recorded and mixed in 1979, released as their debut single on 7 September 1979 by Island Records, and included on their first album The Age of Plastic. The backing track was recorded at Virgin's Town House in West London, and mixing and vocal recording would later take place at Sarm East Studios.

The song relates to concerns about mixed attitudes towards 20th-century inventions and machines for the media arts.

Musically, the song performs like an extended jingle and the composition plays in the key of D-flat major in common time at a tempo of 132 beats per minute. The track has been positively received, with reviewers praising its unusual musical pop elements. Although the song includes several common pop characteristics and six basic chords are used in its structure, Downes and writer Timothy Warner described the piece as musically complicated, due to its use of suspended and minor ninth chords for enhancement that gave the song a slightly different feel.

It was the first music video shown on MTV in the US, airing at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981, and the first video shown on MTV Classic in the UK on 1 March 2010. 

The song has received several critical accolades, such as being ranked number 40 on VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the '80s. It has also been covered by many recording artists.

More information: Vanity Fair

MTV made a huge impact.

Heavy rotation took you from selling

1m albums to 20m albums,

and that meant a lot of dough.

Ozzy Osbourne