One of the most notable channels is MTV which stands for Music Television. Being set up in 1981, MTV broke new ground by being the first of these channels to be created. Later in that same year MTV made music history by making "Video Killed the Radio Star" the first music video to be shown on TV. this launched the channel into fame and into the mainstream.
MTV continued showing music videos from all the top artists of the time, for the first time, bringing music video to the mass audience on a regular basis. there was one rather noticeable trend at the time though, the videos screened were almost all from white artists. popular music from black and ethnic artists had not been shown on the channel. This was changed though as the artist Micheal Jackson became to popular to deny and his videos were picked up and screened on MTV in 1983. although there were a few ethnic artists shown on the channel before, this was the real turning point where the colour barrier was broken and black artists were celebrated appropriately.
Two years later in 1985 MTV made some significant changes to it's formula. now not only did it show new and popular music videos, but it also started screening live feeds from music concerts that were happening around the world. This began in July with the popular Live Aid concerts, most news channels showed only a few clips of the event, MTV though went the whole hog and showed the entire 16 hour performance so that everyone with a television set could see the performance if they wanted to.
Unfortunately over time MTV started to change it's formula away from just music as they were losing viewers. The channel started showing adult rated cartoons and TV shows such as Beavis and Butthead. this led to a rapid decline of music videos shown on the channel as it moved more and more into this new formula. Today almost no music videos are shown on the channel as it is solidly set in it's new formula.
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