"Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles will be remembered, if for nothing else, as the video clip that launched MTV. The date: Aug. 1, 1981.

Of course, MTV didn't kill the radio stars. It enshrined them. It energized rock 'n' roll culture. Everybody associated with music benefited--from radio stations to Rolling Stone magazine. MTV turned pop music artists into recognizable faces. Before MTV, the top artists were rarely recognized. But within weeks of the launch of MTV, artists began hearing the refrain "I saw you on MTV."

And MTV had an even wider impact on our culture--in music, fashion, politics, art, advertising, television and movies. In music, it popularized a whole new kind of music and made visual appeal a prerequisite for musical artists.

Through MTV, Middle America was exposed to what had largely been big-city fashion and trends. Videos of fashion lines popped up in stores; when Norma Kamali opened her New York store, she showed her line on video monitors instead of mannequins. The look and feel of music videos were quickly adopted into television series, motion pictures, even political advertising. Candidates began to sell themselves with an attitude and an image. And video bloomed as an art form.

MTV is now such a part of American culture that it seems hard to believe that MTV was an idea that almost wasn't.

American Express had agreed to buy half of Warner Cable in late 1979. Out of that purchase came two companies: one that operated cable systems, another that was established to create networks for the cable industry. I was hired as the programmer to put together the first 24-hour cable service, an all-movie pay service that became the Movie Channel.

After the first few months of growth for the Movie Channel in 1980, I was charged with developing the product and marketing for the company's first advertiser-supported cable venture.

At that point, when CNN and ESPN were in their early days, the major concern was not the product but whether any basic-cable venture could succeed. At that time, advertisers had a rule: They bought national advertising only on services or programs that had a 3.0 rating (meaning that 3% of U.S. households with TV were tuned in) and 70% coverage of households--a feat that no cable network has yet achieved.

(It was actually this seemingly hopeless financial situation that caused the owners to give me the responsibility for the entire business side of MTV about a year and a half after its launch.)