Lesson

MTV and Live Aid.

On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern, MTV went on the air. John Lack said, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” The first video was The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” a 1979 single. At the start the channel reached cable households in parts of New Jersey.

A lot of the early videos came from Britain, where the form was already further along. U.S. radio was still programmed for an older audience. A clip in heavy rotation could introduce a song before a radio station would. HISTORY.com names Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Duran Duran among the performers that rotation promoted.

Remember the date and the first video. The rest is what the new screen did to the old one.

On July 13, 1985, the same idea of a shared broadcast got much larger. Live Aid played Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on the same day. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure organized it for famine relief in Ethiopia. Britannica estimates the television audience at 1.5 billion.

The songs themselves are on Hits, from YouTube. This page is the timeline, not the playback.

Ask the tutor about this lesson.

MTV’s debut: HISTORY.com. Live Aid’s date, cities, organizers, and audience estimate: Britannica.