MTV's First Video Ever Aired: The Real Story

Claim A says MTV launched in 1981 with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Claim B says MTV launched with The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." Claim B is true, and Claim A is completely made up.

At 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981, MTV flickered to life with a countdown graphic borrowed from the Apollo 11 launch, then cut straight to The Buggles singing about a technology eating its predecessor alive. The irony wasn't lost on anyone — a song mourning radio's decline became the anthem announcing television's new music takeover.

The choice wasn't random. MTV's founders wanted a video that literally addressed the medium shift happening in real time, and "Video Killed the Radio Star" did exactly that with its retro-futuristic visuals and eerie robotic imagery.

What's wild is how small the operation actually was. MTV launched with a tiny video library, so thin that VJs sometimes repeated videos multiple times a day just to fill the schedule. Few cable systems even carried the channel yet — early viewers were a scrappy, scattered audience tuning into what would eventually reshape pop culture entirely.

The song's lyrics about obsolescence turned out to be strangely prophetic decades later, when MTV itself pivoted away from music videos altogether.

Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a landmark video in its own right, often credited as one of the earliest true music videos from 1975, but it had nothing to do with MTV's debut broadcast six years later.

So — were you humming the right tune, or did Freddie Mercury throw you off the scent?