"Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles became the first music video broadcast on the American cable television network MTV.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" is a song written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley in 1979. It was recorded concurrently by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club for their album English Garden and by British new wave/synth-pop group the Buggles, which consisted of Horn and Downes.

The Buggles are an English new wave band formed in London in 1977 by singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes. They are best known for their 1979 debut single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which topped the UK singles chart and reached number one in 15 other countries and was chosen as the song to launch MTV in 1981.

This is a list of the first music videos broadcast on MTV's first day, August 1, 1981. MTV's first day on the air was rebroadcast on VH1 Classic in 2006 and again in 2011. The first hour on the air was broadcast again on August 1, 2016, and was called MTV Hour One, as part of VH1 Classic's planned re-launch as MTV Classic, MTV itself, and additionally streamed on the channel's Facebook page.

Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadcast television, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves and received by a television antenna, or satellite television, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves from a communications satellite and received by a satellite dish on the roof. FM radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephone services, and similar non-television services may also be provided through these cables. Analog television was standard in the 20th century, but since the 2000s, cable systems have been upgraded to digital cable operation.