I think the first time I saw or heard of MTV was in the fall of 1982 in a bar that had a satellite dish.  I was with some radio friends and we watched the station for about an hour. All of us agreed that this could be a big problem for contemporary radio. I only recognized about half of the songs (videos) that MTV was playing, the rest were bands and songs I had never heard of before.  But they all sounded great!

MTV was largely responsible for the second British invasion in the US.  Very few North American bands were making videos back in 1981, but the Brits always had since the 60's. One of the few exceptions were The Monkees who had produced videos from their 60's TV show.  So because of lack of material, MTV played a lot of new music from British and European bands. Most of these songs eventually ended up being played and became hits on radio.  

City tv's New Music pre-dated MTV by two years when it debuted in 1979 and they too played a lot of British acts and broke a lot of new wave artists. This could be one of the reasons that New Wave artists and music became particularly popular in Toronto and Southern Ontario.  City followed with many more video shows like Toronto Rocks, The CHUM Top 30 Countdown with Roger Ashby, and of course the all night show with Christopher Ward and a young lad from Scarborough with Mike Myers. Even CBC had the popular Video Hits weekday afternoons, and Good Rockin Tonight Friday evenings.  

Video maybe didn't kill the radio star, it did hurt radio's ability to "break the hits" and introduce new artists.  MTV and Much Music were doing that and doing it better.  I was always surprised how long it took radio to play some artists and songs that Much Music had been playing for weeks prior and were already in their top ten countdown.

Much was also instrumental in breaking so many new Canadian acts. Mid 80's to the early 2000's was a bit of a golden age for cancon, largely because of Much Music.  New Canadian acts like 54-40, Blue Rodeo ,Glass Tiger, Frozen Ghost, Grapes of Wrath, Platinum Blonde, Martha and the Muffins, Payolas, The Box, Blue Peter, FM, Spoons, Gowan, Red Rider, Strange Advance, Chalk Circle and many others  were selling a lot of albums, filling arenas and getting radio airplay thanks to Much Music and shows like Video Hits and Good Rockin Tonight that were playing their material, and interviewing the artists.  

But as we know, MTV and Much no longer play videos.  Youtube, video and music on demand, new media have changed all of that.  40 years ago today, how the years pass so quickly, but what a great time it was!

That iconic song, Video Killed The Radio Star, almost wasn't used as the first musical moment on MTV. 

Why MTV Launched With A Video Nobody Wanted

Tomas Barlow wrote:

turkeytop wrote:

The Music Video has to be the lamest art form ever conceived.

You said you found watching a test pattern compelling recently, did you not?  

When I was ten years old and there was only one channel on our TV.

Maybe I would have found music videos entertaining too, back then