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MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an 24-hour American cable music video channel officially launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a division of Paramount Global.

The channel originally aired music videos and related programming as guided by television personalities known as video jockeys, or VJs.[2] In the years since its inception, it significantly toned down its focus on music in favor of original reality programming for teenagers and young adults.

Since early 2020, MTV has devoted most of its programming schedule to select programs, primarily Ridiculousness, which in June 2020 aired "for 113 hours out of the network’s entire 168-hour lineup".[3][4][5]

MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the United States and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have since gone independent. Approximately 90.6 million households in the US received MTV as of January 2017.

On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time,[21][22] MTV was launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by John Lack and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia (which took place earlier that year) and the launch of Apollo 11. The words were followed by the original MTV theme song, a vivid rock tune composed by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over the U.S. flag changed to show MTV's logo changing into different textures and designs. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a concept;[23] Seibert said that they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong's "One small step" quote, but lawyers said that Armstrong owned his name and likeness and that he had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound.[24] A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran at the top of every hour in different forms, from MTV's first day until it was pulled in early 1986 in the wake of the Challenger disaster.[25]

The first music video on MTV, which at the time was only available to homes in New Jersey,[26] was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". It was followed by Pat Benatar's "You Better Run". Occasionally the screen went black when an employee at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR.[27] MTV's lower third graphics near the beginnings and ends of videos eventually used the recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years; but they varied on MTV's first day, set in a different typeface, and including details such as the song's year and record label. MTV's on-air programming was originally produced from the Teletronics studio facility at West 33rd Street in Manhattan, NY; programming was uplinked to satellite from a facility in Hauppauge, NY that also served as the uplink for sister networks Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel (originally, then-owner Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment had planned to uplink MTV from a facility located at the studios of WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY, where Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel had been uplinked; said facility was planned to be expanded to handle MTV's needs, but the deal with WIVB fell apart when Warner-Amex was unable to reach a deal with channel 4's ownership concerning a long-term lease).[28][29] MTV later moved studio facilities to Unitel Video's complex located on 57th Street (ironically located across the street from the CBS Broadcast Center, owned by future corporate sibling CBS) in 1987, remaining until 1995 when MTV chose to begin producing studio content in-house.