A closer look
Producers of the first MTV Video Music Awards desperately needed a memorable trophy design but had zero budget to commission a legitimate piece of art. They ended up using the iconic imagery of an astronaut planting a flag on the moon simply because the original Apollo 11 broadcast footage was in the public domain and completely free to use. This cheap corporate shortcut gave birth to the legendary Moonman statue that pop stars have violently competed over for the last forty years. It remains deeply hilarious that the music industry's most coveted symbol of cutting-edge creative achievement was literally born out of a frantic desire to avoid paying copyright royalties to actual artists
