33 Years ago today: Video Killed the Radio Star
1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time, MTV 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 photos of the Apollo 11 moon landing, with the flag featuring MTV's logo changing various colors, textures, and designs. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a conceit. Seibert said they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quote, but lawyers said Armstrong owns his name and likeness, and Armstrong had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound.
The first music video shown on MTV was The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". This was followed by the video for Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Sporadically, the screen would go black when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR. MTV's lower third graphics that appear near the beginning and end of music videos would eventually use 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 record label information such as the year and label name.
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Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2014, 10:47 AM - Edit history (1)
That's what did them in and forced them to "diversify" their programming into other ways to hold on to their viewers.
rocktivity
Last edited Fri Aug 1, 2014, 11:11 PM - Edit history (1)
They tried to turn coolness into a just another commodity that they could force feed to the public, culminating in their demand that the record labels start paying them to playing thier artists.
PBS Frontline explains it all for you:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/
rocktivity
Last edited Tue Nov 23, 2021, 08:32 PM - Edit history (19)
What I knew of MTV was from magazines, then in late 1986, from a broadcast TV show that played videos that were more than 30 days old. I didn't quite get it until I finally saw my first great video of a great song:
Music videos become works of art when the both the music and the video are good enough to permanently perpetuate each other.
If music were food, I'd have a garbage can for a stomach...
rocktivity
only how floored I was to see a video of Mike Oldfield doing "Five Miles Out" (the video of that on YouTube is not the one I recall seeing on MTV.) Other than "Tubular Bells" Oldfield's music just hasn't been played on commercial radio in the US, so I was quite shocked to see it on MTV.
Of course, that was also in their first year or so of operation, before they started having commercials. Once typical television advertising began showing up, the quality began to evaporate. All those cool instrumental music bumps to old industrial films disappeared at the same time.
So, I switched over to USA Network's "Night Flight" and saw stuff that hardly even got airplay on public radio! 
They moved to cyberspace and beyond, baby! 
Not VCRs! 
old! 
...80s tv!
www.my80stv.com 
Some nights I'll put this on and flip through. Lots of commercials, music, movie trailers, and occasionally (VERY occasionally!) some actual movie. But mainly a mishmash of stuff that, if you look long enough, you can almost see the high-water mark... {All credit to the great Hunter S. Thompson for that lovely line!}.
That's not the version I remember. 
Last edited Tue Nov 23, 2021, 08:16 PM - Edit history (7)
Because it was music you saw, you started seeing too many good videos of less-than-good songs. Looks became more important than talent, forcing MTV to subsist on constantly reinventing itself visually -- why do you think Madonna became its patron saint? The beginning of the end was when the VJs, most of whom had actual backgrounds in music, were replaced with "personalities," which culminated in the Village Voice describing the MTV News host (a veteran Rolling Stone reporter) as being "the only person MTV hired because he had a brain." So it was doomed right out of the gate.
rocktivity
Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2014, 08:17 PM - Edit history (1)
