Why Atlanta Viewers Had To Wait To Get Their MTV

“Ladies and gentlemen…rock ‘n roll”

And with that pre-taped announcement, music and television history were made at the same time. As soon as the rocket took off and the Moon Man planted the flag, a revolution was launched that would shake up music and video entertainment for generations to come.

Island Records

MTV, Music Television, debuted at midnight on August 1st, 1981, 45 years ago. The famous first video, “Video Killed The Radio Star,” a 1979 clip from the then-unknown English band The Buggles, then appeared on screen, followed by a brief network introduction promo. Immediately after that came “You Better Run,” a fiery video clip from pop rock superstar Pat Benatar.  Those were the first two of what would be a full day of hit clips, some that would be repeated as many as four times, that would define the 24-hour music video channel. It was the marriage of the twin powers of music and images presented as never before on cable or broadcast TV.

“Starting right now, you won’t look at music the same way again,” proclaimed Mark Goodman during an introduction of himself and the rest of the channel’s fame-bound video jockeys, Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, J.J. Jackson, and Nina Blackwood. “We will do for TV what FM did for radio,” he added in a segment later that night.

See the original first four hours of MTV here. 

A ground-breaking pop-culture eruption was taking place in real time.

And Atlanta viewers saw none of it.

When the 24-hour music video network, the first of its kind, launched that night, no Atlanta cable provider made a place for it. In fact, few, if anyone NATIONWIDE saw MTV’s premiere. Reportedly, only a few outlets in New Jersey were able to see the debut of MTV as it happened. For most other places, including Metro Atlanta, the late-night showing of music superstars like Benatar, Rod Stewart, The Who, and Styx, as well as lesser-known rockers like Ph D, Robin Lane and Chartbusters, and up-and-comers The Pretenders, was a non-event.

In 1981, Metro Atlanta was served by different cable outlets: Cox Cable, Georgia Cable TV, and the great ancestor of today’s Xfinity/Comcast, Cable Atlanta, Inc., which served the Atlanta city area proper. Cable Atlanta was located at 1038 West Peachtree Street in Midtown, where an apartment building now resides. Atlantans could get most any cable channel available from their clunky, music box-sized cable boxes, from HBO and Showtime to ESPN and Nickelodeon, but not MTV. Not yet, anyway.

Knowledgeable sources reported that MTV did not land on Atlanta’s cable lineups until late 1982 to early 1983, too late for Oliva Newton-John and J. Geils Band, but just in time for Michael Jackson and Kajagoogoo. Cable Atlanta, like many other cable operators at the time, was actively laying out its wiring infrastructure and had strict limitations on how many channels it could carry. Also, many cable providers in major urban markets, like Atlanta, were very skeptical of a 24-hour music video channel and balked at putting it in their lineups. In MTV’s place were homegrown music video outlets, The VMC, which launched in July 1982 as a cable service, then on WVEU Channel 69 (Now CBS-owned and operated WUPA), and Video Concert Hall, which functioned as a locally produced MTV substitute.

MTV/YouTube

But MTV execs were aware of the avoidance of their network by cable outlets, and mounted a national, celebrity campaign to get more cable outlets like Cable Atlanta to carry MTV. The network’s then parent company, Warner American Express Satellite Entertainment, took advantage of the network’s growing press coverage and word of mouth to launch the infamous “I Want My MTV” marketing campaign. Launched a year after MTV’s debut, the concept featured MTV stars of the day, like The Police, Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper, on ads urging viewers to call their local non-participating cable company to demand the channel be placed on their lineups. They did, and the demands worked. MTV would finally show up on local cable outlets later that year.

MTV 1982 Promo featuring Pat Benatar

MTV 1985 Promo

Atlanta viewers missed out on some of MTV’s growing pains in the first months it was absent from Atlanta cable systems. Technical glitches, Lack of available music videos, avoidance of African-American artists (until Jackson, Tina Turner, and Prince‘s superstardom), fears that video would indeed kill the radio star and crush the radio industry, which never happened, and the hoops viewers had to go through to get the music channel in stereo. (The cable system had to provide the capability, and the viewer had to tune their stereo to the right frequency to get MTV’s stereo sound. Built-in TV stereo sound was a rarity in those days.)

But things were going nowhere but up for MTV. When the channel launched, it was accessible to 2.5 million homes. By the time the channel reached Atlanta households in late 1983, 18 million homes had access to MTV, according to Billboard (8/2/86). In its present, music video-less form, it gets 67 million households. The channel became an integral part of cable listings here and nationwide, and would redefine music and TV trends in the ’80s and beyond.

As the years went by, MTV went from Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen, and Quiet Riot to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and OutKast, to Backstreet Boys, *NSync, and Britney Spears, to The Real World, Jersey Shore,  and Ridiculousness. No longer the source for music videos (YouTube has taken over that role), MTV evolved into more of a basic entertainment channel, celebrating its 45th year on the air. Atlanta may have missed MTV’s birth and infant years, but thanks to YouTube and Internet Archive, a look at what would be the future of sound and vision is only a click away.

Note: this post was updated to include new details and to clarify certain information on Atlanta’s cable infrastructure.