NEW YORK, AUGUST 1981

A new cable channel called MTV promises rock ’n’ roll around the clock. Right now, it’s barely reaching anyone. But perhaps what we’re witnessing isn’t just the launch of a TV station, but the birth of a new pop culture.

Shortly after midnight, an astronaut floats across the screen.
The American flag stands in the gray dust of the moon, but suddenly an angular, colorfully spray-painted “M” appears in its place. Someone says, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” Then the synthesizers kick in. The first song is, of all things,
“Video Killed the Radio Star.”

That’s not exactly subtle.

MTV—Music Television—has been on the air for just a few minutes, and strictly speaking, almost no one is watching. The signal mainly reaches a few cable households in New Jersey. In Manhattan, you could probably climb onto the roof of the Empire State Building, build an antenna out of clothes hangers, and still have a better chance of picking up a signal from Martians.
But somewhere on the other side of the Hudson River tonight, a few teenagers are sitting on their parents’ carpet, watching something that didn’t exist yesterday: a radio station with pictures.
No sitcoms. No news anchors with stiff, set hairstyles. No game shows where housewives win a refrigerator. Just music, commercials, brief announcements—and more music.
Twenty-four hours a day.

This is either the dumbest idea since the disco skateboard or the next revolution.

THE NEW FACES OF RADIO

The people guiding listeners through this strange program don’t call themselves DJs, but VJs: Video Jockeys. Nina Blackwood looks as if she’d spent the night in a sports car. Mark Goodman has the affable voice of an FM radio host who’s suddenly discovered that he now needs hands and shoes, too. Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, and J.J. Jackson stand in front of abstract backdrops and try to act as if it’s perfectly normal to speak into a TV camera between REO Speedwagon and The Who.
It’s all still a little off.
The transitions are choppy. Some videos look as if they were shot during a lunch break in an abandoned TV studio. Many record labels don’t view these clips as art, but as free promotional material. They willingly supply them to the network because no one believes this could ever become a business in its own right.
But the clumsiness is part of the appeal. MTV doesn’t feel like television. It feels like a pirate station that accidentally gained access to a satellite.
The major networks usually present music like a rare circus act: Here’s the band, here are three minutes, now back to the weather. MTV turns that logic on its head. Here’s the band. And another one. And another. The weather can wait.
The song is no longer just a song. It gets costumes, lighting, editing, color, and a little world that exists for three minutes. The record tells you what to listen to. MTV will show you how to look while doing it.
That might become more important than whatever’s coming out of the speakers right now.

THE EYE BUYS IN

Until now, a musician could be successful even if he looked like an accountant, a truck driver, or the guy who runs the import section at the record store. That generous era may be coming to an end.
In the MTV world, an artist doesn’t just have to sound the part. He has to look the part.
Maybe somewhere in Detroit, a former child star will realize that a music video doesn’t have to be a filmed performance. Perhaps he’ll step onto illuminated cobblestones, dance with monsters, and turn an ordinary pop song into a short film. And perhaps this film will force the network to face an uncomfortable truth: that a channel that supposedly showcases the music of a generation cannot remain merely the white-washed showcase of the record industry.
Maybe a young dancer from Michigan will come to New York, with a few dollars in her pocket and a knack for treating every camera like a personal accomplice. One day, she might roll across a stage in a torn wedding dress and prove within five minutes that in the new pop era, it’s not just the song that counts, but the moment everyone is talking about the next morning.
MTV couldn’t just show people like that.
MTV could create them.
The line between musician, actor, model, and living advertising campaign will blur. A singer might no longer ask, “Is the single any good?” He’ll ask, “What’s the image?”
And somewhere, a director will answer: Fog. Motorcycles. Pyramids. Leather. A burning car. Twenty dancers. A dove. An explosion.
The pop star of the future will no longer just record albums. He’ll produce his own mythology.

I WANT MY TV

MTV still has to fight for every cable connection. Many providers consider the channel too loud, too young, or simply unnecessary. But one can imagine how MTV will solve this problem: not with polite business letters, but with rock stars.
Perhaps Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and other celebrities will look directly into the camera and urge viewers to call their cable companies. Not tomorrow. Now. Teens will pester their parents, parents will pester the cable providers, and a catchphrase could spread like a virus across the country:

I want my MTV.

That would be a new development. The audience is no longer asking to be allowed to watch a specific show. It is demanding an entire cultural territory.
Once the channel is airing in enough living rooms, it will be more than just a broadcast medium. It will become a secret dress code, a youth magazine in motion, and a nationwide schoolyard. A boy in Nebraska might look like a farmer’s son in the morning, watch a video from London in the afternoon, and show up in class the next day wearing eyeliner.
London, New York, Los Angeles, and the American suburbs will all end up in the same image-generating machine. Regional scenes could become national movements overnight. A hairstyle will be invented in a club and appear in every shopping mall in the country two weeks later.
The record companies will claim they control this machine.
They’ll probably believe that until the machine starts controlling them.

THE MOON MAN HANDS OUT AWARDS

MTV uses the moon landing as a symbol because the network apparently considers its own arrival a historic step for humanity. That’s ridiculous—but perhaps not entirely wrong.
If music videos do indeed become an art form in their own right, MTV will sooner or later award them prizes. Not little golden gramophones. That would be too respectable. The prize would have to look like an astronaut—a little man with a flag who has just landed on an unknown planet.
The awards ceremony itself would probably resemble a controlled accident more than a gala. Artists wouldn’t just perform; they’d try to blow each other out of cultural memory.
Clothes might slip out of place. Guitars might catch fire. Singers might kiss, fight, hurl insults, or take over the stage in the middle of someone else’s acceptance speech. The next day, hardly anyone would know who won. But everyone would know who wore what, said what, or destroyed what.

Television would no longer document the music.

Television itself would become the event.

THE WHOLE WORLD IN ONE CABLE

At the moment, MTV is an American experiment with limited reach. But cable and satellites don’t particularly care about national borders.
In six years, a European version of the channel could launch. Perhaps it would open with “Money for Nothing,” that as-yet-unwritten song about workers who watch musicians on TV and wonder why these guys get paid to stand around in front of cameras.
MTV could be on the air simultaneously in Amsterdam, London, Berlin, and Stockholm. A shared visual language would emerge: the same leather jackets, the same guitar poses, the same commercials, the same feverish editing pace.
And if one day musicians on two continents were to play simultaneously for a good cause, MTV could broadcast it live for hours on end. London would reach out to Philadelphia, Queen would suddenly belong to the whole world, and a generation would experience global community not through politicians, but through amplifiers.

Rock ’n’ roll, until now the music of rebellion, could become an international communication system.

THE PROGRAM WILL BREAK ITS OWN RULES

Of course, a network can’t show the same white men with guitars forever. Even the most patient teenager will eventually realize that other sounds exist out there.
In the Bronx and Harlem, a new kind of music is already taking shape—one built on turntables, breakbeats, rhymes, and stolen electricity. The major radio stations barely understand it. MTV will likely ignore it at first, too. But sooner or later, the pressure will become too great.
Then a show with a title like “Yo! MTV Raps” could bring hip-hop straight from the streets into American living rooms. Parents will complain. Politicians will issue warnings. Record sales will skyrocket. Words, sneakers, and dance moves from New York will appear in suburbs that have never seen a subway.
After that, MTV might try the opposite: no explosions, no dancers, no makeup. Just musicians, instruments, and a room full of candles. You could call it “Unplugged.” Ironically, the very same electric network would prove just how powerful a band can sound without electricity
Maybe one day, a group from the rainy Northwest—still unknown—will play there amid flowers and candles. The performance might feel like a funeral mass, even though the singer is still alive.
MTV will learn that youth culture isn’t made up of a single sound. It’s a clash of sounds.

Whoever shows this clash will, for a moment, own the future.

NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE THE NEWS

One day, the network might discover that its audience doesn’t just want to know when the next Van Halen video is airing.
A former music journalist might stand in front of the camera and speak in a calm tone about records, politics, protests, and dead rock stars. MTV could explain elections, encourage young people to register to vote, and let presidential candidates ask questions that never come up on the major evening news programs.
For a generation that views news anchors as pieces of furniture, a music channel might suddenly seem more credible than the traditional networks.
When an idol dies, MTV might interrupt its regular programming. Millions of young people won’t find out from the newspaper, but from a man standing in front of the MTV logo. At that moment, the channel will no longer be a toy. It will be the campfire of a generation—the place where their good and bad news first arrive.

SEVEN STRANGERS AND THE END OF MUSIC TELEVISION

But every revolution develops an appetite for its own children.
Music videos are cheap as long as the record labels supply them for free. But after a few years, the audience will see through the formula. Singer walks through a factory. Band plays in the rain. Car explodes. Repeat.
Then MTV will look for something more unpredictable than music.
Perhaps the network will put seven young strangers together in an apartment, set up cameras in every room, and wait for them to fall in love, yell at each other, and reveal to one another who they really are.
At first, it will look like a social experiment. In reality, it could become the foundation of an entire television industry. Soon, it won’t just be musicians who become famous for appearing on MTV. People will become famous simply for appearing on MTV.
The programming could gradually fill up with dating shows, pranks, luxury mansions, teen dramas, and the family lives of aging rock stars. At some point, someone will tune in, watch for three hours, and not hear a single song in its entirety.
The network called Music Television might stop being a music channel.
That wouldn’t be an accident. It would be the logical culmination of the idea: Once MTV has learned how to turn attention into images, it no longer necessarily needs music as a pretext.

AFTER TELEVISION

And after that?

Maybe one day the screen won’t be in the living room anymore. Maybe every viewer will carry a small monitor with them, on which they can select any video at any time. No VJs, no waiting, no set order. An endless catalog, controlled by the thumb.
In this world, the original MTV dream would be everywhere—and MTV itself might no longer be necessary.

The videos would live on. The rapid cuts, the fashion, the self-staging, the calculated scandals, and the sense that every song needs an image: all of that would become the common language of culture. Musicians would own their own channels. Viewers would become performers themselves. Anyone could broadcast. Anyone could be famous. Anyone could run their own music television channel for fifteen seconds.

Perhaps that is the strangest possible future for this small cable channel: it could win by disappearing.

THE FIRST STEP

But tonight, there’s still no sign of any of that.

Today there’s just one shaky station, five VJs, and a stack of music videos. An astronaut stands on the moon. The logo constantly changes color. The Buggles announce the death of the radio star, while somewhere in New Jersey a teenager moves closer to the TV.

Radio, of course, isn’t going to die.
The vinyl record won’t die.
Concerts won’t die.

But from now on, they’ll face competition from something that’s at once advertising, cinema, a fashion magazine, a youth club, and an electric dream.

MTV claims it wants to bring rock ’n’ roll to television.
Perhaps, instead, it’s bringing television into rock ’n’ roll.
And perhaps, after that, music will never again be just something to listen to.