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MTV 1981 Tribute Page!
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On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m., MTV: Music Television launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by original COO John Lack. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV theme song, a crunching guitar riff written by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over a montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a conceit, associating MTV with the most famous moment in world television history.
Appropriately, the first music video shown on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. The second video shown was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Sporadically, the screen would go black when someone at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR.
At launch time, the official subscriber count across the U.S. was 3,000,000 (the actual number was 500,000), but the immediate impact would have argued that every young adult's television in the country was tuned to MTV.
The early format of MTV was modeled after top 40 radio. Fresh-faced young men and women were hired to host the network's programming and to introduce videos that were being played. The term VJ (video jockey) was coined, a play on the acronym DJ (disc jockey). Many VJs eventually became celebrities in their own right. The original five MTV VJs in 1981 were Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J. J. Jackson and Martha Quinn.
The early music videos that made up the bulk of MTV's programming in the 1980s were often crude promotional or concert clips from whatever sources could be found. As the popularity of the network rose, and record companies recognized the potential of the medium as a tool to gain recognition and publicity, they began to create increasingly elaborate clips specifically for the network.
MTV First Broadcast, August 1, 1981
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MTV Bumper, 1981
Events of 1981:
August 1, The birth of MTV, the 24 hour-a-day music television station
The 1st launch of a space shuttle (Columbia)
Reagan fires the striking air traffic controllers and breaks up their union.
Pope shot by insane Turk, May 13.
Sandra Day O'Connor becomes first female Supreme Court Justice.
Mitterand becomes French president.
Prince Charles and Diana Spencer marry on July 29.
Luke and Laura's Wedding (General Hospital), Most watched wedding in history next to Charles and Diana.
Dynasty premiers in prime-time hours and becomes a hit.
The US Agriculture Department tries making ketchup a school lunch vegetable.
The first IBM PCs begin to roll off the lines.
The first DeLorean sports cars roll off the assembly line, the VIN500.
Private satellite dishes are given the OK by the FCC.
Fruit fly break out in California.
Reagan starts toying with the Libyans, and deploys ships in the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claimed rights to even though no one else recognized it as theirs.
Pac-Man is introduced in the US and sparks a huge craze.
Spain allows legal divorces.
Poland government crushes the Solidarity movement.
The first reports of homosexual men dying due to a mysterious breakdown of the body's immunization system. Later it becomes known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, aka AIDS and researchers realize it can strike anyone.
52 American hostages released in January after 14 months in captivity in Iran.
Antigua gained its independence November 1,1981.
Assasination attempt on Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 by John Hinkley Jr.
