When MuchMusic first aired in 1984, it was dubbed “Canada’s answer to MTV.” The channel launched the careers of musicians Barenaked Ladies and Bryan Adams as well as media personalities like Nardwuar and George Stroumboulopoulos. Its studio space at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto, once famously open to anyone on the sidewalk, was the nucleus of music in Canada, the home base for original programming like RapCity and the Much Countdown as well as the annual MuchMusic Video Awards.
But that MuchMusic is dead. In 2006, after the channel’s sale to Bell Globemedia (which later became CTVglobemedia and then Bell Media), there were rounds of layoffs and programming changes, pivots and rebrandings. Specialty music channels were cut, as was much of MuchMusic’s original programming. In 2019, music videos were down to just one hour per week. Right now, it’s all reruns: endless episodes of Futurama and Simpsons—which may not have come as a surprise, since the channel eventually dropped “Music” from its name. Its VJs, who were the face of MuchMusic and doubled as hosts, journalists, and entertainers, were all let go. What’s left of MuchMusic’s legacy now lives on in its archive, which is locked away in a Bell Media library and is now being digitized. Access was limited. But former VJ Christopher Ward managed to get his hands on the material and published his oral history of MuchMusic, Is This Live?: Inside the Wild Early Years of MuchMusic, the Nation’s Music Station, in 2016. Material from the archives was also used by Sean Menard for his new documentary, 299 Queen Street West, which premiered at SXSW and will be available on Crave this December.
