An MTV Video Music Award (commonly abbreviated as a VMA) is an award presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in music videos. Originally conceived as an alternative to the Grammy Awards (in the video category), the annual MTV Video Music Awards ceremony has often been called the "Oscars for youth", an acknowledgment of the VMA ceremony's ability to draw millions of youth from teens to 20-somethings each year. By 2001, the VMA had become a coveted award. The statue given to winners is an astronaut on the Moon, one of the earliest representations of MTV.
The annual VMA ceremony is usually held in mid-September, and broadcast live on MTV. The first VMA ceremony was held in 1984 at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. Other VMAs have been held in Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas. The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards aired on Thursday, September 6, 2012.
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Famous quotes containing the words video, music and/or award:
“These people figured video was the Lord’s preferred means of communicating, the screen itself a kind of perpetually burning bush. “He’s in the de-tails,” Sublett had said once. “You gotta watch for Him close.””
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)