“Hardly anyone thought it would succeed,” we are told at the outset of “I Want My MTV,” an enormous, wildly entertaining book that covers the first 11 tongue-wagging years of MTV’s existence, before reality programming began to push the music out. MTV’s arrival as an unstoppable youth-culture juggernaut came later, to the surprise of, well, pretty much everyone. The first video was an obvious one: “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles. It was televised, albeit just barely: The nascent music-video channel was unavailable through most cable carriers, so hardly anybody could bear witness to its glitchy launch even if they’d wanted to. 1, 1981, long before people were conditioned to want their MTV, Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment gave birth to a cultural revolution.
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