August 1st 2006
· The Top 100 Videos That Broke The Rules airs Monday 1st August from 12 noon
· TV That Broke The Rules…MTV’s Top 25 Moments airs Monday 1st August 2006 from 9pm
From ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ to ‘Pimp My Ride’, MTV has come a long way since its launch back in August 1981. From makeshift beginnings, the world’s first music channel has become a global TV network synonymous with groundbreaking music, innovative shows and new TV genres. The original US channel has multiplied into 78 music channels worldwide that can be seen in 481.5 million homes in 179 countries.
The first ever hour of MTV kicked off at midnight, August 1st, 1981 with footage of a rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral and ‘VJ’ Alan Goodman uttering the immortal words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll’. Its first hour included an edgy line up of videos from the likes of Buggles, Cliff Richard, Rod Stewart and REO Speedwagon. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that these specific videos helped spearhead a music and television revolution… but they did!
Nowadays it’s difficult to recall the music and TV environment in 1981 that MTV burst into and promptly shattered. Music was something you heard in the radio and bought in the shops, and TV was presented sedately by responsible adults. Music on TV was confined to a couple of hours a week – if you missed it, you’d have to wait a full week to get your next music update. But MTV was to change all that, blasting out music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and embracing the fledgling music video industry and catapulting it to centre stage. And between the music videos, MTV introduced the world to ‘VJs’ – a collection of untutored, rough-around-the edges but supremely passionate young presenters whose lifeblood was loud music. The camerawork was dodgy, the presentation was amateur, the crews made things up as they went along and the channel flew by the seat of its pants… but the rule book had been rewritten forever.
By 1987, MTV had crossed the Atlantic, with Elton John flicking the switch to launch the one-size-fits-all ‘MTV Europe’ with Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ as the inaugural video. The pattern of discovering raw new presenting talent continued, with an early line up of presenters that included Ray Cokes, Steve Blame, Paul King and Davina McCall. Within a couple of years, MTV Europe was broadcasting from behind the iron curtain, had created Europe’s biggest annual music awards ceremony and had interviewed everyone from Madonna to Mikhail Gorbachev. But MTV was to evolve further, and in 1997, MTV had launched a UK specific channel, hosted by the likes of Cat Deeley, Sara Cox and Eddie Temple Morris. Today there are a staggering 25 music channels in the UK alone, nine of which are owned by MTV. And it doesn’t stop there… With mobile phone distribution for our channels and ‘MTV Overdrive’, a new online, on-demand music and entertainment service that launched earlier this year, MTV has its eyes firmly on the future.
Since the early ‘80s, MTV has consistently broken rules, pushed buttons and boldly created new TV genres. And this August, on the channel’s 25th birthday, MTV will be creating two special programmes to show you just how far the world has come… From midday on August 1st, ‘The Top 100 Videos That Broke The Rules’ is a countdown of the most seminal, edgy and noteworthy music videos – the kinds of videos that have built careers, given birth to trends and inspired us all. This will be followed at 9pm with an examination of the most contentious, iconic and mould-breaking moments of television in MTV’s history, in ‘TV That Broke The Rules… MTV’s Top 25 Moments’.
