August 1, 1981 would be the day that would shape a generation and change the way we would 'look' at music forever. It was at 12:01am that a little cable channel known as Music Television was launched and the rest, as they say, would become history.

If you were fortunate enough to be part of the MTV generation then you were exposed to many songs and groups that might have never been played on your radio had it not been for the channel.

Groups like; Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls and Madness were all part of a second wave of the British Invasion.

To celebrate it's 32nd anniversary, here a 5 things you may not know about MTV.

1. When MTV launched it was available to only about 10,000 cable subscribers in northern New Jersey.

2. The Original MTV Theme was written and performed by a musician named Jonathan Elias. Elias would later go on to write the 'Yahoo!' yodel.

3. Now known more for reality shows like Jersey Shore, the first time MTV broke its normal musical format was in 1987 with a trivia game show called Remote Control, which debuted in 1987.

4. On February 27, 2000, MTV aired its millionth video. To celebrated this milestone, the channel went back to the beginning by airing it's first video ever, 'Video Killed The Radio Star,' by The Buggles.

5. According to a representative at MTV, Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' is the most played video of all-time.

If you're interested, here are a couple of books taking a look at the early days of MTV.

 

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