The MTV Phenomenon

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MTV (Music Television) is a cable television network based in New York City and launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs.
On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m., MTV: Music Television launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by John Lack. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV theme song
Appropriately, the first music video shown on MTV was the ironic "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 an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR.
The original purpose of MTV was to be "Music Television," playing music videos 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, guided by on-air personalities known as VJs, or video jockeys. The original taglines of the channel were "You'll never look at music the same way again," and "On cable. In stereo." Although the concept of playing music videos 24/7 has long been abandoned, MTV still promotes and plays a limited selection of music videos on its TV channel and web site.

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 channel 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 channel.

MTV rejected other black artists' videos, such as Rick James' "Super Freak," because they didn't fit the channel's rock dominated format at the time. The exclusion enraged James; he publicly advocated the addition of more black artists' videos on the channel.
According to The Austin Chronicle, Jackson's video for the song "Billie Jean" was "the video that broke the color barrier, even though the channel itself was responsible for erecting that barrier in the first place." After airing Jackson's music videos, MTV, then a struggling cable channel, became very popular. Jackson's videos were credited for this success and MTV's focus switched from rock to pop and R&B. This move helped other black artists such as Prince and Whitney Houston break into heavy rotation on the channel.

Despite targeted efforts to play certain types of music videos in limited rotation, MTV greatly reduced its overall rotation of music videos throughout the first decade of the 2000s. While music videos were featured on MTV up to eight hours per day in 2000, the year 2008 saw an average of just three hours of music videos per day on MTV. The rise of the Internet as a convenient outlet for the promotion and viewing of music videos signalled this reduction.

Today, MTV still plays a limited selection of music videos, but the channel primarily broadcasts a variety of popular culture and reality television shows targeted at young adults and older adolescents. In 2005 and 2006, MTV continued its focus on reality shows, with the debuts of popular shows such as 8th & Ocean, Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, NEXT Two-A-Days, My Super Sweet 16, and Parental Control.