A TV Icon Turns 30, But Do Kids Still Want Their MTV?

On August 1st, 1981, at 12:01 a.m., MTV: Music Television launched and changed the face of television, music and branding. That means the brand that once typified youth rebellion is (gasp!) old enough to be the age of its target demographic — and you know what they say about trusting anyone over 30...

The video below captures the first on-air moments of the channel. The montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing with the MTV logo was producer Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert’s way of suggesting the moment was as auspicious as the moon landing. The "moon man" is still part of the network's visual identity (and the award handed out at the VMAs) to this day, even if it's no longer focused on music ... or videos. (Don't miss Fred's blog, by the way, for his thoughts on MTV's 30th anniversary.)

With the words, "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," voiced by John Lack, EVP of parent company Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment (WASEC), followed by the MTV theme song written by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, a new generation of entertainment was born that irrevocably changed pop culture.

Ahead of Monday's anniversary, VH1 Classic will commemorate MTV’s thirty years during a three-day marathon this weekend. The network produced a video for their 2011 upfront presentation in anticipation of the anniversary, "30 Years in Ninety Seconds" —

The MTV audience at launch in 1981 was only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey, but it was the opening act of a music revolution and the first TV network to develop itself as a "brand." The first music video played on MTV was (prophetically or hopefully?) “Video Killed the Radio Star” by British pop band, The Buggles: 

Today there are four surviving original VJs (a term coined by the network to describe "video jockeys" instead of "disc jockeys"): Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter, Mark Goodman, and Nina Blackwood.

Part of their job in those early days was “to hang out with cable operators and convince them to pick up MTV. Within six months we started getting these stories back from small towns in the Midwest and in the South where people were going into record stores and asking for the Buggles, who had been off the shelves for about three years by 1981,” comments Goodman to Rolling Stone.  

Bob Pittman, who later became CEO and president of MTV Networks, was the channel’s first programmer and hired Les Garland to run it in January 1982. “There was some fear, because we didn’t get the instant distribution some people thought we would. We used to hear, from cable operators and advertisers, “nobody’s gonna watch music on television 24 hours a day. That’ll never work.” Heard it from people in [our own] management, too. It was closer to touch-and-go than people realized,” said Garland in a lengthy article in The New York Post.

Music videos were so new that the channel had only about 250 clips in rotation at the start, including lots of Rod Stewart, Styx, REO Speedwagon and Charlie Daniels. When MTV became available in Manhattan, legendary ad man George Lois presented the idea of a brand campaign demanding cable companies carry the channel, using the world’s biggest rock stars saying, “I Want My MTV.”

The obvious first choice was Mick Jagger, and once he agreed, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Pat Benatar and dozens of others jumped on board and MTV produced spots resulting in hundreds of thousands of young people calling their cable companies – and demanding…MTV. The award-winning campaign raised the bar for cable programmers' marketing campaigns, too. The "I Want My MTV!" campaign launched in 1982, but lasted for a few years.

The original MTV logo appeared at the top of every hour, more than 15,000 times each year until the mid-80’s. In a departure for logos and branding strategy, the yellow "M" with red letters "TV" adapted to the changing times with different colors, patterns, and images filling in the large block letter as the network’s identity morphed with the nuances of pop culture, but stayed on point in a strategy developed by Dale Pon, head of MTV's ad agency LPG/Pon, and based on the 1950’s cereal commercial "I want my Maypo!"

The MTV logo, at top, was created by Manhattan Design and monkeyed around with it was the order of the day, as the channel's founding execs demanded that it not be treated with kid gloves. Changing and mutating the logo became part of the iconoclastic visual identity of the network that was once TV's brat but is now an elder (OK, graying) statesman of sorts.

A few groundbreaking highlights for those who remember and for those who weren’t yet born:

1983 - Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” “Michael Jackson broke MTV open from a rock station to a pop station. In a way, he was the beginning of the end of that first incarnation of MTV, which was the rockers. Once Michael came in, it became more pop,” said Martha Quinn.

1984 - First MTV Music Video Awards, featuring Madonna’s writhing bridal-gowned performance of “Like A Virgin” and a fifteen foot high wedding cake.

1985 - Live Aid concert coverage for 16 hours from London and Philadelphia (while ABC showed only highlights during primetime) followed years later by Live 8 and Live Earth concerts.

1989 - MTV Unplugged debuts, featuring acoustic concerts by musicians including hip hop acts (LL Cool J, Naughty By Nature, Onyx) and by 1993, West Coast gangsta rappers Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Nirvana’s 1991 "Smells Like Teen Spirit," brought alternative rock video to the fore, and was followed by power pop acts like Green Day, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Fiona Apple, and Sarah McLachlan.

By the late 90’s, fewer rock music videos on-air led to the slogan "Rock is dead,” and by the early 2000’s, music videos were only aired in the early morning or on TRL (Total Request Live), which led Justin Timberlake to challenge MTV to "play more damn videos!" during his acceptance speech at the 2007 Video Music Awards.

The 1990’s also saw the debut of reality shows, The Real World and Road Rules.

2002 - The Osbournes debuts, and the instant success of Ozzy & Co. seals the deal: MTV is now officially in the reality TV business, with music the secondary consideration.

2003 - MTV debuts Punk'd, from Ashton Kutcher, Pimp My Ride, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica and The Ashlee Simpson Show.

2009 - Cue Jersey Shore, It's On with Alexa Chung, and the resurrection of MTV Unplugged with the likes of Adele, Katy Perry, and Paramore.

2011 - MTV Unplugged continues with rapper Lil Wayne, and in October, the return of Beavis and Butt-Head. MTV’s current hits — Jersey Shore, Sixteen and Pregnant, and Teen Moms — show what a difference a decade or two can make.

This year was also the year that MTV's beloved CEO Judith McGrath, credited with shaping MTV into a cultural phenomenon, stepped down. Rising through the channel's marketing ranks to become MTV Networks Chairman and CEO (a title she assumed in 2004), she oversaw strategy, marketing and programming for MTV, MTV2, VH1, Logo, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, TV Land and Spike.

"Creatively, financially, all the brands and businesses are in wonderful shape today. I leave with pride, joy and gratitude for the ride of a lifetime” she stated on resigning.

"As far as I know, MTV isn't doing anything in particular to celebrate the 30th," Goodman told Rolling Stone. "MTV doesn't want people to think about how friggin' old they are. The people watching now were so, so not born when we launched. They were light years away from being born."

Happy Birthday, MTV — your viewers today may not care ("Ew! 30?! Gross, that's, like, old!") but we do.