A Short History of the Medium

In the U.S. at 12:01 PM August 1, 1981 MTV launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by original COO John Lack. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV guitar riff over a montage of the most famous moment in world television history, the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Other entrepreneurs credited with the network's inception include former Monkee Michael Nesmith who had pioneered a program called PopClips and producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert.
Appropriately, the first music video shown was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. At launch time, the actual subscriber count across the U.S. was 500,000, though official counts listed 3 million.
As early as 1984, MTV was criticized for excessive pornographic references and accused of denigrating the importance of music, replacing it with a purely visual aesthetic and putting less image-centric acts at a distinct disadvantage.
On the other side of the moral influence debate, it has also come under criticism for being too politically correct and sensitive, censoring too much of their programming. Many music videos were censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel.
The early format was modeled after top 40 radio. Today, MTV has practically discarded music videos in favor of broadcasting a variety of pop culture, youth culture, and reality television shows aimed at adolescents and young adults.