Saturday, August 31 marks the 35th anniversary of one of Canada’s most successful TV ventures — MuchMusic.
The popular specialty channel — which started out as a pricey Pay-TV service — caught the wave of the music video revolution just as it crested. The music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was released the December before and Madonna, The Police, Prince, Cindi Lauper, David Bowie and dozens of Canadian bands all got a huge bounce from video play.
Read and see much more about Much here at Retrontario, a robust nostalgia site which has a new post up celebrating “Canada’s Music Station.” Their report, “The Revolution will be televised,” provides plenty of back story on how Citytv programming such as The New Music and Toronto Rocks paved the way for the launch of Much, grooming that first generation of music hosts and VJs including John Majhor, Christopher Ward, J.D Roberts and Jeanne Beker as well as Michael Williams and Erica Ehm. There’s a hilarious video report, too, about the three other bids for the MuchMusic licence back in the early ’80s.
“Rise Up,” as the Parachute Club urged, and check it out now.
