One of these specialized channels was , a music channel that featured concert footage and music oriented TV programs; with the interactive Qube service, viewers could vote for their favorite songs and artists. MTV's programming format was created by the visionary media executive, Bob Pittman, who later became president and chief executive officer of MTV Networks. Pittman had test driven the music format by producing and hosting a 15 minute show, , on WNBC, New York, in the late 1970s.

Pittman's boss, WASEC COO John Lack, had shepherded a TV series called , created by former Monkee-turned solo artist Michael Nesmith, the latter of whom by the late 1970s was turning his attention to the music video format. HBO also had a 30 minute program of music videos, called , that first aired around the time of MTV's launch and would last until late 1986. Also around this time, HBO would occasionally play one or a few music videos between movies.

It should also be noted that in his book , Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour Head-Writer Mason Williams, states that he pitched an idea to CBS for a TV show that featured "video-radio" where disc jockeys would play avant-gard art set to music on the air. CBS quashed the idea, but Williams set his own composition Classical Gas to music on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The book where this claim is made was first published in 1971, ten years before MTV first came on the air.

The first images shown on MTV were a montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Further information: First music videos aired on MTV On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m.

, MTV: Music Television launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by original COO John Lack. Those words were accompanied by the original MTV theme song, a crunching guitar riff written by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over a montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. MTV producers used this footage because it was in the public domain.

Appropriately, the first music video shown on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. The second video shown was Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Sporadically, the screen would go black when someone at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR.

At launch time, the official subscriber count across the U.S. was 3,000,000 (the actual number was 500,000), but the immediate impact would have argued that every young adult's television in the country was tuned to MTV.

Jackson, one of the original five VJs at MTV's debut Further information: List of MTV VJs The early format of MTV was modeled after top 40 radio. Fresh-faced young men and women were hired to host the network's programming and to introduce videos that were being played. The term VJ (video jockey) was coined, a play on the acronym DJ (disc jockey).

Many VJs eventually became celebrities in their own right. The original five MTV VJs in 1981 were Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J.

Jackson and Martha Quinn. In 2005, this group (except for J.J.

Jackson, who died in 2004) became hosts on Sirius Satellite Radio.