“SARAH, DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR QUESTION?” prods a harried production assistant to a terrified tween, on-set at at Usher’s Much on Demand appearance as her three friends text message each other, sitting side by side.
“Since you’ve collaborated with a lot of amazing artists in the past, who would you like to work with today,” Sarah repeats. “Um… I think.”
“WE’RE BACK IN FIVE!” shouts the manic camera guy, flagging his arms like a runway attendant. “Now SCREAM!” As the lights strobe, decibel levels are cranked to 11. My butt is chafing on a neon Tetris cube on the MuchMusic set (recently redesigned with input from an online panel of 2,000 “TouchMuch” members who advise corporate 15 times a year). Logo-emblazoned surfboards adorn the walls. Guests are interviewed on see-through interview benches stuffed with stuffed animals. Martha Stewart might call the interior design “sophomoric,” but then, these are high-school sophomores in charge. And they are LOUD.
Usher struts into the MOD environment to be interviewed by VJ hottie Matte Babel as fans standing outside the studio snap cellphone photos in the cold, their breath fogging up the glass windows. Maria, holding a handmade “Number #1 Fan” sign, is summoned to introduce the next segment. Tears stream down her face.
“You a’ight?” Usher inquires.
“Fine…” Maria whimpers, shaking like a Polaroid picture.
I’m sitting next to Joseph, a 10th-grade hip-hop fan from Vaughan who thinks Usher is OK and “Lil Wayne needs to try harder to be real.”
Usher describes how he faced the death of his estranged father and the fans outside “whoo!” ever harder. “They’ll scream at anything,” says Babel.
During a programming block, Joseph and I gaze at the video for Usher’s “Love In This Club (Part I),” in which a sinewy model convinces Usher to do it on the dancefloor.
“What do you like better, the music or the music video?” Joseph asks me.
“The music video.”
“Me too,” he seconds, trying not to stare at my chest. The last video Joseph discovered was Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” when a friend sent him the link on MSN. “Do you know what MSN is?” inquires Joseph, sensitive to my age. I have just turned 22 years old.
TV KILLED THE VIDEO STAR?
If my advancing age seems noteworthy, it’s only because in MuchMusic’s eyes, I am officially an uncool geriatric. Though the station has a demographic of 12-34, it programs to a narrower group of 18-24 year olds. And VJ Devon Soltendieck says the ideal viewer is a 15-year-old girl, “obsessed with clothing, shoes and bubblegum” (A characterization the Much publicity department says is wrong). When the Jonas Brothers came to Much in July, over 5,000 fans crammed Queen and John for the chance to see the Disney heartthrobs in person, sleeping in the street for over 48 hours to secure their spots. A recent appearance by the cast of teen-vampire drama Twilight had kids camping out in torrential rain.
But as Much approaches a quarter century on the air, some old-timer fans have criticized the station’s move towards pop culture programming — airing Video on Trial and 50 Cent reality shows during prime-time hours, for example. In his February column on the This Magazine blog, Rheostatics guitarist and author Dave Bidini accused the station of “Dorito’ing Canada’s youth to death.”
“Circa 2008, MuchMusic has aged worse than anyone could have expected,” he wrote. “The shows are siphoned from the worst of FOX television: the horniest rock star, the dumbest videos of all time, Britney, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and more Britney. It’s as if programmers have decided that the average Canadian teenager is brain-dead, and instead of reviving their neurons, they’re slugging at them with a mallet.” I wonder what Bidini thought of Much Spring Break 08: Cancun, which climaxed with an obnoxious mook named “Boomer” farting on VJ Leah Miller’s face.
With the recent cancellation of MuchMuch’s landmark journalism program The New Music (which predated the station — originally airing in 1979 on Citytv) and Canadian fringe show Going Coastal, CBC commentators decried Much for programming The O.C. reruns in their wake. In a recession, Much’s choices may be smart, but they’re sad. (MTV in the U.S. has followed suit, cancelling flagship Total Request Live in November, the last bastion of music videos aired on the station.) While blogs like Pitchfork Media deliver news and new music on an up-to-the-second basis, they lack the fresh Canadian perspective The New Music was able to provide. We now have a generation with access to everything, insight into nothing.
“Ratings reflect what people want, but at the same time, they also reflect what networks promote,” writes former VJ Hannah Sung, 2004-2006 host of The New Music, in an email. “The plug was pulled on The New Music before there was anything to exist to take its place.” Today the question remains, what will? (There are plans to revive the brand online in a regularly updated blog, with occasional interviews aired on TV.)
Since its August 31st, 1984 inception, MuchMusic has undergone several changes to become the “multilayered, multiplatform programming experience” its executives pride themselves on today. Much reaches over 8.6 million households on cable, satellite and digital phones; over 2.6 million “unduplicated 12-34 year olds” tune in each week and stream over 2.3 million clips of video monthly on MuchMusic.com, text message video requests, customize ring tones and post Twilight cast photos to the station’s fan media site, Show Me Yours. With four round-the-clock specialty television channels, Much ensures its cable empire in MuchLoud, Much Vibe, Punch Much and sister station MuchMoreMusic to exist as a profitable video jukebox with next to no overhead (the majority of MuchMoreMusic’s employees were laid off in late November).
And by extending its brand as far as the Middle East (Much ArabYeah!), Argentina (MuchMusic Latin America) and the Czech Republic (MuchMusic Czech), the station has even managed to make money off its website in an industry baffled by online marketing. (Digital ad revenue rose from 12 to 16 per cent of total revenue in the last year, as visits to the MuchMusic blog rose by 805 per cent.) The complaints of former fans aside, Much is no culture empire in crisis.
“Is MuchMusic kicking ass? Hell yeah it’s kicking ass,” says 37-year-old Senior Vice President Brad Schwartz, general manager of the Much MTV Group, in charge of programming and promotions for both brands, trussed up like a member of Fall Out Boy with blond highlights and skinny jeans. “We’re up 11 per cent in the ratings, with two million users on our website and 6,000 screaming fans in attendance at the VMAs. We’re bigger than ever.”
IT’S NOT ME, IT’S U
If Much is unconcerned about the haters, it’s certainly not unaware of them. In a special entitled U Suck aired this year, MuchMusic VJs responded to hate mail sent to the station that was read onscreen by children. “Dear Much Music, you are a walking, talking piece of crap,” read one fourth grader. “Dear Leah — I hope you fucking die.” Babel travelled “all the way to Etobicoke” to visit Brian, a disaffected drummer who disagrees with Much’s new programming initiatives.
“Between Overrated and your regular programs like Much On Demand and Born to Be, all that Canadian youth see are the dull, marketed lives of the celebrities you talk about,” wrote Brian in a concerned email. “Now you claim that they’re overrated and have worn out their welcome, despite the fact that YOU, MuchMusic, are the cause of their over-exposure. Take it from me, Brian, this is not what people want to watch!” Megaphone in hand, Babel reasoned with Brian by screaming in his cul-de-sac. “Here’s the thing — we do pop culture and pop music for a reason.”
“Money?” asks Brian.
“Because it’s POPULAR Brian, you see that?”
A fake executive brandished a pie chart listing (false) percentages of music tastes in hip-hop, R&B, and rock at 33.33 per cent each. Brian thinks MuchMusic should play more Foo Fighters, but “what Brian likes” is labelled at 0.001 per cent on the chart.
“See that part here?” mocked the executive. “Well that part is what YOU represent. You’re the mistake Brian.”
Brian might be naive, but he did raise some legitimate concerns. The glorified strippers of Girlicious benefit from Much’s constant exposure, leaving undiscovered bands to battle anonymity out in cyberspace. While MuchMusic makes a contribution to their local industry — their VideoFact initiative has contributed nearly $55 million in funding for Canadian musicians since 1984 — reality show disBAND critiques would-be groups with “motivational coach” Greig Nori of Treble Charger with cruel, humiliating contempt.
MUCH LESS MUSIC?
“Why don’t they play music videos anymore?” Well, according to the terms of their Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission licence, 50 per cent of the station’s programming must include exactly that. “At Much, despite what you may see on TV, we’re all very big on music videos,” says Soltendieck over the phone. “But whenever we air them, no matter what the time slot is, people still don’t want to watch them.” Such programming draws an very low ratings, forcing video flow into the insomniac hours. “We have a responsibility to entertain our audience with what they want to watch,” says Soltendieck, “and if kids don’t watch music videos the way they used to, it’s our job to figure out what they do watch before they move onto something else.”
Something else: on March 27th, the season finale of Randy Jackson’s America’s Best Dance Crew was the fourth-most-watched program in all of MuchMusic history. The success of the JabbaWockeeZ aside, the buzzword at Much HQ remains “interactivity.” In competition with Youtube, Guitar Hero and DVDs, MuchMusic survives by having personal communication actually define their programming.
Millennials pride themselves on constant communication with each other; a practice Schwartz calls “collective cocooning.” Today, any video is pretext for exponential meta-narrative possibilities, Britney’s single a mere jumping-off point for a complex, intermediated experience. MuchMusic’s Motorola cellphone fulfills a role Sook-Yin Lee never could.
“You have to be constantly adapting to new media,” advises Schwartz, kicking up his Converse sneaks. “Kids today are in constant communication with their friends, they’re techno morphing, with a constant demand for more content that they can mash up and make their own. They don’t want to wait for their favourite video to come onscreen — they want to watch it over and over again, and then email it to their best friend and buy the ring tone, so that when their phone rings they can hear the song, and vote for it to come on MOD. Then when the song enters the countdown, they can come into the studio audience to actually meet the band, and camp out in the street with their friends, waiting for them to come onstage to win a MMVA.
“We’re a youth content company, so there’s really no other way to think about it. We want our audiences to be so passionately engaged with our programming that they form a bond for life. This means we need to be involved in every aspect of their lives, to deepen that emotional connection as much as possible.”
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW
Growing up, my bond with MuchMusic meant standoffish video dances in our middle-school gym, VJ celebrity sightings in Kensington Market (“OMG! There’s Amanda Walsh eating an empanada!”) and gym-class skipping routines to singles from Dance Mix ’95. The Wedge introduced me to indie rock, so I stayed home Friday nights to watch it, floored by a Hannah Sung interview with Broken Social Scene during their first tour across Japan. Much made Canadian music matter; even if the band was Econoline Crush, with fans kicking soccer balls with Matt Good in Vancouver as Ed The Sock sparred with Rick “The Temp” on camera.
Nostalgia is easy; I’m sure someone out there still mourns the death of Front Page Challenge. But Much from the beginning was determined to offer an alternative perspective on the dissemination of mass culture, wherein viewers could read themselves into the role of the VJ.
“A channel that fucked around all the time and then played some music videos in between,” is how former VJ Steve Anthony describes his ’87 to ’95 tenure. “There were no rules for us, and there were rules for everyone else, and no one to compete with us. So we made it up as we went along because we sure as hell didn’t know what we were doing.
“We would follow people around with a camera with gum on the lens. I would sit in the studio and say, ‘Hey I’ve got this great book on how to make papier mâché alligators,’ and we would just do that. Soon it became a hierarchy of MTV trying to steal stuff from MuchMusic… by watching Much, MTV realized that hey, you can shoot anything, you can put the camera anywhere, and you don’t need that formality.”
The world has changed. Today, TV commercials look more like music videos than the videos themselves, as directors tweak their product for the 95 per cent of Japanese viewers who watch MTV on their phone. But if MuchMusic’s brand has extended itself towards ring tones, reality programming and the MuchMusic MasterCard, it’s lost focus as a television station. Viewers have more opportunities to connect with Much than ever, posting on message boards, text messaging PunchMuch, and shrieking their guts out live at MOD. Yet the critical discourse Much has always provided is no longer a priority. The station has made a valiant effort in specialty programming like Much Talks, in which Sum 41 travelled to the Alberta tar sands with VJ Hannah Simone to discuss issues of climate change. But if Much stops speaking seriously to youth because it can’t afford the lousy ratings, what Canadian media is going to fill that cultural role? Maybe the people concerned about it need to stop looking to Much for answers.
A LITTLE BIT LONGER
“People are growing up in dog years now, which is why VJs typically only stay here for a couple of years,” says Babel, who scored his job after sweet-talking the receptionist into summoning a producer. (At the front desk, I watch an aggressive girl try the same approach, only to be rebuffed by security.)
“I remember premiering the new Ting Tings video and this kid in the audience telling me, ‘That’s not new, I saw it online two weeks ago.’ There’s no pipeline for media anymore, so it’s harder to critically evaluate mass culture. Instead we try to focus on creating experiences for people, memories that they’ll have for the rest of their lives, even if it’s just screaming their heads off in front of the Jonas Brothers.”
MTV Canada — who merged with MuchMusic under CTVGlobeMedia in June 2007 — offers a token brand of experience too, with two-thirds Canadian programming, stipulated by a Talk TV licence. With both channels under the same umbrella, executive Schwartz doesn’t see them as competition.
“They’re two very distinct brands, configured to be two very different things. MTV is more of a lifestyle, reality, train wreck–TV type of channel,” he admits. “But I see MuchMusic as the big flagship, the Canadian brand you just trust and love because you’ve grown up with it all these years on your dial.”
“Kids today want to feel like they’re a part of what’s going on,” adds VJ Soltendiek, “and they’re a lot smarter than adults give them credit for.... If [some] people don’t love the content we have on Much, the majority really does.” And that majority isn’t lamenting the loss of The New Music at Sweaty Betty’s: “MuchMusic is not Queen West, we’re not Ossington. We’re as much Queen West as we are Churchill, Manitoba. It’s like, what’s the goal of Sesame Street? To keep children entertained.”
Back at MOD on a Friday, I’m observing So You Think You Can Dance Canada finalists Natalli Reznik and Miles Faber play “Whose Ass Is It?” The clustered preteens look limp and disaffected, lighting up only at the cameraman’s instructions. (A caller can’t even feign excitement when she wins a free trip to Egypt.) But as we gather behind Tokyo Police Club in preparation for their live, two-song set, I spy a young boy text messaging on his Blackberry while the teen beside me takes iPhone snapshots of her boyfriend.
Prodded into applause after Tokyo Police Club’s stellar performance of “Your English Is Good,” the audience lines up to receive autographs. “Do you watch MuchMusic?” I ask a junior from Northern Secondary. “I don’t know, sometimes.…” She gives me a furtive glance. “I’m into swing music.”
Today, teenagers learn about the Ramones through Hot Topic and Rilke through Gossip Girl. Culture is accelerating, so media try to mimic each other — cellphones turn into video cameras, blogs turn into newspapers, television stations prompt you to their websites. Like any media outlet, MuchMusic can’t afford to be like it was, because it no longer knows what it is, or where it’s going.
“People may wax nostalgic for the past, but MuchMusic by every measure, is successful,” says former MuchMusic VP David Kines at a John Street restaurant. He started in 1983 as an editor on The New Music, and left the company 11 weeks ago to “pursue other options after a change in management.”
“The audience is strong, the revenue is strong, it’s by all means hitting its target. The people who’ve grown up with it? They’ve grown up. There are new kids in the hallways of the high school now. Some of the teachers are the same, this principal has moved on, but there’re new kids there — they’re learning, they’re consuming, they’re watching, they’re engaging and, most importantly, they’re interacting.”
