MTV Launches

2017

MTV Networks' Times Square headquarters in the mid-1990s, by which point the channel had reshaped pop music distribution worldwide. At 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, MTV airs its first music video: The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." A new visual grammar is invented; pop music becomes inseparable from the image it ships with. By 1985 MTV is mandatory infrastructure for any major-label release. The subject dates from 1981; this photograph was taken in 2017.