It’s 30 years since MTV launched and in its three decades, it’s changed the way we think about – as well as watch – music. Gillian Orr charts its greatest hits
The Independent [UK]
1 August 2011
By all accounts, 1981 wasn’t shaping up to be a great year for music lovers.
Bucks Fizz had exploded after winning the Eurovision Song Contest, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” hogged the radio airwaves and the popularity of Adam Ant and the other New Romantics meant men were parading around in their girlfriends’ make-up. Then on 1 August, just after midnight, a new television channel aimed at teens and 20-somethings launched with the words: “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” It was called MTV.
Set up with the intention of playing music videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, MTV quickly catapulted them into the mainstream. Not only did the channel encourage videos to be viewed as an art form, they also became a marketing tool for record companies. Artists were forced to embrace the medium or risk retirement. Madonna and Duran Duran were just some of the stars that benefited in the early years. Of course, it had its detractors and many thought the channel was devaluing the industry by placing the entire emphasis on the visual aesthetic rather than the music.
MTV’s viewers, a generation desperate to disassociate themselves from their baby-boomer parents, had no unifying identity: the civil-rights movement and Vietnam were their parents’ struggles. These cynical and dissatisfied youths came together, however, by tuning into this eclectic new channel. The MTV Generation was born…
The article continues at The Independent.
CAJ note: Video from erikfilipaz on YouTube. MTV’s First Broadcast, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. The first moments of the new cable network.
H/T American Power
Update: At Verum Serum Scott writes, “Remember when MTV was more than pregnant teens, dysfunctional situations and the Jersey Shore? I do…”
