Ultimately, video killed the pioneer of music video channels.
MTV’s music channels went dark on Wednesday, closing with the clip that introduced the world to the 24-hour station on Aug. 1, 1981 -- “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live all closed down on New Year’s Eve. Channels in Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland and Poland also shut down.
The move was announced in October. The main MTV channel stopped airing music videos more than a decade ago, focusing instead on reality television. It will continue to broadcast.
On August 1st, 1981, at 12:01 AM EST, the MTV channel was officially launched nationwide in the USA, with the spoken words of “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” followed by the MTV theme song, and then followed by MTV’s first music video: “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the… pic.twitter.com/L6uEb52IpT
— History Defined (@historydefined) December 6, 2025
After more than four decades, the proliferation of YouTube videos, social media platforms and artificial intelligence videos, the MTV experiment became a victim of its own creation.
The channel featured “VJs” who introduced the videos, with Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, J.J. Jackson, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn handling the duties when the music channel debuted. Kurt Loder delivered music news at “MTV News.”
Blackwood, Goodman and Hunter are now featured on SiriusXM radio channels.
Goodman had the honor of introducing the first video on MTV in 1981.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’ll never look at music the same way again,” he said, before leading into the video, performed by the Buggles.
BBC journalist Jono Read shared the moment the channel went off-air in a video posted to X. Each channel aired a different final video. MTV 90s aired Spice Girls’ “Goodbye.”
MTV Music's last song was Video Killed The Radio Star pic.twitter.com/48WNnbgesb
— Jono Read (@jonoread) December 31, 2025
In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Horn said that everything the group learned in the studios went into “Video Killed the Radio Star.”
“I once worked out it would take 26 people to re-create the single live. Geoff suggested putting my voice through a radio speaker,” Horn said. “We had the line, ‘I heard you on the wireless back in ’52′ for ages before I came up with ‘Lying awake intent at tuning into you.’
“Aged 3 or 4, I used to lie in bed listening to Radio Luxembourg. When you’re half asleep, it’s like being stoned: I’d totally zone in.”
The lyrics of the song performed by the Buggles were written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes and Bruce Woolley -- and sung by Horn. They seem poignant now:
“Oh-a-oh
“You were the first one
“Oh-a-oh
“You were the last one.”
Neither MTV nor its parent company, Paramount Skydance, have commented on the brand’s future in the United States.
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