MTV original programming

MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a division of Paramount Global.

The channel originally aired music videos and related programming as guided by television personalities known as video jockeys, or VJs. In the years since its inception, it significantly toned down its focus on music in favor of original reality programming for teenagers and young adults.

Since early 2020, MTV has devoted most of its programming schedule to a single program, '' Ridiculousness'', which in June 2020 aired "for 113 hours out of the network’s entire 168-hour lineup".

MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the United States and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have since gone independent. Approximately 90.6 million households in the US received MTV as of January 2017.

History

1964–1977: Previous concepts

Ideas for music television began in the 1960s. The Beatles used music videos to promote their records starting in the mid-1960s. Their 1964 film '' A Hard Day's Night,'' and particularly its performance of the song "Can't Buy Me Love", led MTV to later honor the film's director Richard Lester with an award for "basically inventing the music video".

In 1967, a Los Angeles company called Charlatan Productions began producing promotional films for rock groups, with a unique approach that involved interpreting individual songs by crafting original scripts and artistic scenarios to match. Charlatan was founded by filmmakers Peter Gardiner and Allen Daviau, both of whom were special effects producers that year for the film, '' The Trip''. Tom Rounds, former program director for San Francisco Top 40 radio station KFRC, was brought on board later in 1967 as Charlatan president. Under Rounds’ leadership, and on contract to record companies, Charlatan produced the short, song-length promo films and then distributed them on videotape to TV stations around the country. By mid-1968, Charlatan had already completed forty films for fifteen record companies, for artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Animals, Steppenwolf, Aretha Franklin, Richie Havens, The Who, The Rascals, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Connie Francis, The Cowsills, and Ricky Nelson.

In 1974, Gary Van Haas, vice president of Televak Corporation, created Music Video TV, a channel with video disc jockeys, to be shown in record stores across the United States, and promoted it to distributors and retailers in a May 1974 issue of '' Billboard''.

MTV's original format was created by media executive Robert W. Pittman, later president and CEO of MTV Networks. He tested the format by producing and hosting a 15-minute show, ''Album Tracks'', on New York City's WNBC-TV in the late 1970s.

Pittman's boss, Warner executive vice president John Lack, had shepherded '' PopClips'', a TV series created by Monkee-turned-solo-artist Michael Nesmith, whose attention had turned to the music video format in the late 1970s.

1981–1991

Launch

On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time, MTV was 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 the launch of Apollo 11. The words were followed by the original MTV theme song, a vivid rock tune composed by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over the American flag changed to show MTV's logo changing into different textures and designs. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a concept; Seibert said that they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quote, but lawyers said that Armstrong owned his name and likeness and that he had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound. A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran at the top of every hour in different forms, from MTV's first day until it was pulled in early 1986 in the wake of the ''Challenger'' disaster.

The first music video on MTV, which at the time was only available to homes in New Jersey, was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". It was followed by Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Occasionally the screen went black when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR. MTV's lower third graphics near the beginnings and ends of videos eventually used the recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years; but they varied on MTV's first day, set in a different typeface, and including details such as the song's year and record label. MTV's on-air programming was originally produced from the Teletronics studio facility at West 33rd Street in Manhattan, NY; programming was uplinked to satellite from a facility in Hauppauge, NY that also served as the uplink for sister networks Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel (originally, then-owner Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment had planned to uplink MTV from a facility located at the studios of WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY, where Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel had been uplinked; said facility was planned to be expanded to handle MTV's needs, but the deal with WIVB fell apart when Warner-Amex was unable to reach a deal with channel 4's ownership concerning a long-term lease). MTV later moved studio facilities to Unitel Video's complex located on 57th Street (ironically located across the street from the CBS Broadcast Center, owned by future corporate sibling CBS) in 1987, remaining until 1995 when MTV chose to begin producing studio content in-house.

As programming chief, Robert W. Pittman recruited and managed a team of co-founders for the launch that included Tom Freston (who succeeded Pittman as CEO of MTV Networks), Fred Seibert and John Sykes. They were joined by Carolyn Baker (original head of talent and acquisition), Marshall Cohen (original head of research), Gail Sparrow (of talent and acquisition), Sue Steinberg (executive producer), Julian Goldberg, Steve Lawrence, Geoff Bolton; studio producers and MTV News writers/associate producers Liz Nealon, Nancy LaPook and Robin Zorn; Steve Casey (creator of the name "MTV" and its first program director), Marcy Brafman, Richard Schenkman, Ronald E. "Buzz" Brindle, and Robert Morton. Kenneth M. Miller is credited as MTV's first technical director at its New York City-based network operations facility.

Within two months, record stores were selling music local radio stations were not playing, such as Men at Work, Bow Wow Wow and the Human League. MTV also sparked the Second British Invasion, featuring existing videos by UK acts who had used the format for several years (for example, on BBC
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