When did the Planet Earth video by Duran Duran premiere on MTV?

Answer 1

To make a long answer short, I don't know the exact date of its first airing on MTV, but it's likely to have been sometime in August or September of 1981.

For more detail:

The video for "Planet Earth" was filmed in late December 1980, not long after Duran Duran signed with EMI and recorded their first album Duran Duran. It was directed by Russell Mulcahy (later to direct feature films such as Highlander) in a film studio in St. John's Wood in London.

The video was aired on various video programmes in the UK, Europe and Australia starting with the single's release in February, 1981; in fact, the "Planet Earth" single reached #8 in Australia on the strength of the video and video-prompted radio play (the band had never toured there).

MTV itself was not launched until August 1, 1981. "Planet Earth" and the censored version of "Girls on Film" were among the videos that MTV put into occasional rotation during their first year, but the band and the first album were not initially very successful in America and the videos weren't played heavily.

The "Planet Earth" video didn't receive a lot of attention until the band's second album, Rio, began climbing the charts in 1982. When the blockbuster videos from that album (such as "Hungry Like The Wolf", "Rio" and "Save A Prayer") went into heavy rotation, the first album had a resurgence in popularity, and was eventually reissued in the US with the new song, "Is There Something I Should Know", which also had a very popular video. During this year the video for "Planet Earth" reappeared on MTV and was seen for the first time by many music fans who had missed it in 1981.