On August 1, 1981 at 12:01 a.m., the way we consume music changed forever with the debut of the first 24-hour video music channel. “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles was the first video to be shown on a brand-new cable channel dubbed “MTV.” I hope we now see the irony in this over 42 years later.
At the time, the term music video meant the band or artist would perform their song in a mock concert setting, or they would perform on live television programs such as Top of the Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test.
MTV would also broadcast concerts. REO Speedwagon was the first band to showcase a concert on MTV. The channel exposed those who lived in small towns to a different aspect of culture that they would not hear on their local radio station or see in their Middle America communities. 
In its early days, MTV received criticism from one of the biggest names at that time. In 1983, David Bowie had just released “Let’s Dance.” He agreed to be interviewed for MTV and criticized the channel for the lack of black artists in rotation. 
CBS Records caught wind of this and released a firm statement claiming that if MTV did not play more black artists, CBS Records would not allow the channel to play videos distributed by the label.
To avoid further backlash, MTV programmers decided to air a music video by an artist who just released an album titled “Thriller.” The first Michael Jackson music video that aired on MTV was “Billie Jean.” This launched Michael Jackson’s solo career to the popularity that we are all more than familiar with.
On the other side of the coin, more established artists were not on board with the concept of MTV right off the bat. John Oates of the music group Hall & Oates commented in an interview that he hated the idea of having to make videos to get their music out to the public. 
However, a phenomenon quickly began to occur. If a video was shown on MTV, more likely than not, their record sales would skyrocket. MTV controlled how the labels and artists were making their money.  
Donald Fagen of Steely Dan was releasing new music for his latest solo album during this era. One music video was created for the single “New Frontier,” but Fagen himself was not in the video. When asked about music videos, Fagen replied that music videos ruin the audience’s interpretation of the meaning behind songs’ lyrics. 
Moving forward to the 1990s, grunge had taken over the world and MTV. The channel began to delve into other internally created programs, with the most prominent being “MTV Unplugged.” 
The program spawned three GRAMMY Award-winning albums, with two of those albums winning the most coveted award: Album of the Year. I like to think of this era as the peak of MTV’s featured programming. They were featuring less music videos and instead including segments and shows that focused on music news and interviews. 
The idea of modern-day reality TV was in its infancy when “The Real World” premiered on MTV in 1992. There have been 146 canceled reality shows on MTV. Some of them were a flash in the pan and only lasted for a season or two, but there were also shows like “Jersey Shore,” “Punk’d” and “Pimp My Ride.”
During this timeframe, MTV was airing less music videos. Perusing early 90s and 2000s editions of TV Guide only confirmed this fact. In a 10-year span, time allotted for music videos went from 13 and a half hours to just 8 hours each day. Justin Timberlake even said during an award acceptance speech at the VMAs that MTV needs to play more music videos.
By the late 2010’s, MTV had begun prioritizing certain programs like Ridiculousness. In June 2020, Ridiculousness aired for 113 hours out of its entire 168-hour lineup.
I do not understand how something so revolutionary has lost sight of why it was created in the first place.  
I wonder what the creators of MTV think about the state of their channel. Would they have even created it in the first place or pulled the plug the minute that reality TV programming was taking up more airtime than music videos? After watching a video of the first ever hours of MTV programming, I could not imagine watching that in 1981, being so optimistic for the evolution of music and slowly watching MTV deteriorate into what it is now.