MTV
Identification Cable television network
Date Launched on August 1, 1981
MTV began as a cable television network entirely devoted to
airing the new format of music videos, twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week. The channel was incredibly influen-
tial in 1980’s popular culture: Not only did it change the
nature of music marketing and the course of musical his-
tor y, but it also permanently altered the editing styles of nar-
rative television and cinema.
MTV (Music Television) began broadcasting on U.S.
cable television networks on August 1, 1981. The
channel’s purpose was to provide music videos twenty-
four hours a day. Promotion spots during the early
years of MTV featured an astronaut on the moon
alongside a television, a flag, and the MTV logo. The
graphic was accompanied by a simple but heavy gui-
tar riff. The graphic could be taken to mean that the
commencement of MTV was as groundbreaking as
the placement of humans on the moon. The net-
work’s slogan was “I Want My MTV.” It seemed a way
of declaring that there was a demand for the product
the network had to offer. The music it promoted was
targeted at a young demographic whose collective
taste was hard to categorize as being for any one style
of music. The first video the network aired was
“Video Killed the Radio Star,” a quirky single by the
then-unknown band the Buggles that asserted that
the rise of music videos would sound the death knell
for radio-based musicians.
Early Format and Audience During MTV’s early
years, the network modeled its programming sched-
ule fairly closely on those of music radio stations. It
aired several videos in a row, with brief breaks for mu-
sic news on the half hour and longer breaks at the top
of every hour. The videos were even introduced by
video deejays, or veejays. In 1987, MTV began airing a
week-end summary calledThe Week in Rock.Bybroad-
casting music news every half hour, all day every day,
MTV quickly began to supplant print media such as
music magazines as young people’s primary source of
information about the U.S. popular music scene.
Music videos were typically three or four minutes
long. They sometimes followed a narrative line pro-
vided by a song’s lyrics, and sometimes they simply
featured a band or artist performing the song, albeit
often in unusual, surreal, or constantly changing set-
tings. The videos tended to strive to be visually ar-
resting, featuring bright colors or stark, expressive
black-and-white photography. As the medium pro-
gressed, some videos were made with the same high
production values as Hollywood films, featuring
elaborate design, intricate plots, and exotic settings.
Videos also quickly developed their own distinctive
visual syntax. Most noticeable, they tended to be ed-
ited far more aggressively than were mainstream
Hollywood movies and television programs. Shots
were briefer and cuts were designed to be more ob-
trusive, again with the goal of seizing and holding
the attention of young viewers. As young people did
indeed begin watching MTV in significant numbers,
moreover, the style of the network’s videos came to
define their generation, which began to be discussed
in terms of fast editing and short attention spans.
MTV featured a wide array of music, including
brand new and formerly underground artists, in-
creasing its appeal to America’s teens. Indeed, as the
1980’s progressed, the youth appeal of MTV seemed
almost inevitable, combining as it did a reputation
for featuring (and creating) cutting-edge trends of
the decade with a distinctive look that differentiated
it from any television program that young people’s
parents might watch (or approve of). MTV was seen
as something belonging to everyone less than thirty
years old. It came to serve a function for the youth
culture of the 1980’s that radio had served for a simi-
lar demographic in the 1950’s. MTV allowed Ameri-
can youths to see what their favorite artists looked
like and to follow fashion trends related to those art-
ists. Even the commercials shown on MTV were
geared toward a decidedly youthful market. Prod-
ucts advertised were very likely to fall within the cate-
gories of cutting-edge clothing, trendy automobiles,
fast food, video games, and similar items. Moreover,
they came to use the visual styles first developed by
music videos, seeking to appeal to young viewers by
speaking their visual language.Bands and Genres In the early years of MTV, 1981-
1984, bands from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and
Australia were featured in heavy rotation, partly as a
result of the fact that those bands were among the
most eager to produce music videos and submit
them to the network. English bands were heavily rep-
resented on MTV’s playlist, followed by Irish, Austra-
lian, and Scottish bands, respectively. As a result of
the influx of these bands, the musical sensibility that674 MTV The Eighties in America