
(via Menttal Floss) by Jon O’Brien
Now that almost every single music promo is just a finger click away, it’s easy to forget that at the dawn of the music video age, schedule-hopping specialist TV shows like USA’s Video Concert Hall and Nickelodeon’s PopClips were largely the only way audiences could access music videos. That all changed with the launch of MTV at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981.
Although the channel has since become synonymous with trashy reality series and cheap clip shows, there was a time when MTV truly did live up to its name. And the idea of seeing the cream of new wave, post-punk, and AOR musicians performing 24/7 was treated by the network with as much reverence as the moon landing. Forty years later, here are 20 little-known facts about MTV’s monumental launch…
Read more: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/648999/mtv-music-video-tv-network-facts?a_aid=45307