Music Channels

MTV (Music Television) was launched on 1st August 1981, at 12:01am. A recording of the opening 10 minutes is in the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6xesXLIAA

It opened with a montage of the Columbia space shuttle launch and the Apollo 11 moon landing, with the American flag being replaced with an MTV flag on the surface of the moon. This was to try and show the significance of the event and how it would change music forever. Although it didn't quite have the same impact as the moon landing, MTV still changed the music industry, and how bands and artists got their music out to the public.

MTV is arguably the biggest and most recognized music channel brand in the world due to it being the first music channel and subsequently grew to diverse into other markets such as more channels with different genres of music, and making actual TV programs such as Jackass.

However due to the sudden popularity of MTV upon it's launch, others wanted to get in the action as well, with numerous other music channels being launched. On current UK TV, there are 29 different music channels, such as 4Music, Q, Smash Hits and The Box. And all of them are only in our small country, other larger countries will have many more. MTV used to play all kinds of music when it first came out, but competition has been more focused on certain genres. MTV has followed suit by launching various different MTV channels to play different genres of music such as MTV Classic and MTV Rocks.




Music channels have helped the music industry dramatically. Videos could now be used to promote music and artists/bands.

To be continued...