Aug. 10 marks the big 4-0 for MTV, which launched in 1981 with images acquired from NASA featuring the first moon landing. The first-ever music video featured on the channel – which, at the time, was viewable only by N.J. residents – was the ever-appropriate Buggles tune “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

By the end of the decade, MTV had become a household name, emphasized by Dire Straits’ 1987 hit “Money for Nothing,” in which Sting famously chants the MTV advertising slogan, “I want my MTV.”

MTV was created with the sole intent to air music videos, and nothing else.