Music television channels are replete with reality shows that have little in the way of, y’know, music. I Wanna Work for Diddy? Please. But legendary punk band NOFX’s new doc series (they hate the term “reality show”) Backstage Passport fracking rocks.

“We went on tour and brought two cameramen to film a DVD we were going to put out on [label] Fat Wreck Chords,” NOFX frontman Fat Mike says, backstage in Toronto last week prior to a two-night stand at Kool Haus. “What happened was that the footage was so good, they were like, ‘we should shop this to TV because this is better than a tour DVD.”

The band played it for HBO, Showtime and Fuse and the latter (formerly MuchUSA) bought it and began airing the eight episodes last spring. Backstage Passport covers the band’s year-long, 20-country 2007 tour, during which they’re forced to flee Colombia after death threats, are bum-rushed by fans jumping from the second-level balcony in Santiago and have to be smuggled past riot police in Peru after a gig goes horribly awry. Then, when hundreds of pissed-off fans storm NOFX’s hotel, Fat Mike has to placate them by playing an acoustic set. That’s the first two episodes.

Later editions see the guys snorting bad drugs in Singapore — “It was cut up with this gnarly fucking shit — we were fucked up” — hitting an S&M club in Japan, brawling with promoters in Jakarta, bonding in a Russian bathhouse and staging a (mostly) triumphant concert in China.
But here in Toronto, unless you subscribe to MusiquePlus (channel 672 on your digital dial) or go online, you’re out of luck because none of the four music-related channels in English Canada signed on for Backstage Passport. Of course, it’s really one outlet: MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic, MTV and MTV2 are all owned by CTV. (Much’s ex-sister station MusiquePlus was sold to Astral Media last year.)

“It’s not even money — we’re hardly asking for anything, like almost no money,” Mike grouses. “They don’t want to put out anything that might offend somebody, [anything] that’s real. We’re not above the radar enough. People who work at MTV Canada, they don’t fucking care who we are.”

I contacted a Much/MTV publicist, who emailed that they “are looking at it. However, at this time no decision has been made.” But Mike says, “we played it for them. They weren’t interested. Now it’s too late. We’re gonna release the DVD in February with all the extra footage so MusiquePlus is the last station that’s going to get it.”

The thing is, it’s not like there isn’t room for something a little cult-y on music TV — and keep in mind, NOFX has sold six million records over the past 20 years. But clearly CTV would rather repurpose its main-network shows — Much reruns So You Think You Can Dance Canada, Degrassi, Greek and Instant Star — or program imported stuff like Brooke Knows Best, Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods, Paris Hilton’s My New BFF and My Super Sweet Sixteen Presents: Exiled (“Will any of these daddy’s girls be able to handle being exiled to remote locations, harsh conditions and life without a sidekick?”)

Not that I have a problem with those fake reality shows. It’s the lack of real  reality — not to mention music — on their schedules that’s too Much of a bad thing.