page_title: Much (TV channel)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Much (TV channel) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken by SimonP in April 2005
context_page_description: Much is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by Bell Media that primarily airs pop culture programming, most commonly in form of comedy, aimed at teenagers and young adults.
  MuchMusic launched on August 31, 1984, under the ownership of CHUM Limited, and was originally focused on music programming, including blocks of music videos and original series focusing on Canadian musicians. In the years since its acquisition by Bell, Much has canceled the majority of its music programming due to budget and staffing cuts; the network's full name would be retired in 2013 in reflection of their decreasing reliance on music-related programming.
context_section_description: MuchMusic was licensed on April 2, 1984 by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to CHUM/Citytv. It had faced competition from two other proposed services. One of them, CMTV Canadian Music Television, was deemed not to have sufficient financial resources. The third applicant was Rogers Radio Broadcasting. The CRTC believed that the Canadian market could only support one music video service and CHUM's proposal was chosen because of various commitments it had made and the company's expertise in music programming. The station was initially patterned on City Limits, an overnight weekend rock music show which had aired on sister station CITY-TV since 1983.
  Shortly thereafter, MuchMusic was launched on August 31, 1984 as one of the first Canadian cable specialty channels. It was headed by the channel's founders John Martin and Moses Znaimer. The first video played on MuchMusic was "an early music-to-film synchronization short from the 1920s which featured Eubie Blake performing Snappy Songs." The first video made specifically for television air play was Rush's "The Enemy Within".
  Making use of CHUM's facilities and production teams, the channel produced many specialty musical and variety shows, including the long-running dance show Electric Circus and the late 1980s game show Test Pattern, and Citytv shows such as City Limits and The New Music also became integral parts of the MuchMusic schedule.
  The channel's format consisted primarily of an eight-hour daily block which mixed scheduled shows with VJ-hosted general "videoflow", which would then be repeated two more times to fill the 24-hour schedule. Some variance from this model was seen with the late-night shows City Limits and Too Much 4 Much (a show that featured panel discussions surrounding controversial music videos that the channel had refused to air in regular rotation), and live specials such as Intimate and Interactive.
  For the first few years of the channel, it was classified as a pay television service and was therefore offered largely in bundles alongside other pay-stations such as First Choice and TSN, and would occasionally offer free preview weekends for non-subscribers. The subscriber count was at 500,000 customers by December 1984. In December 1987, MuchMusic received permission from the CRTC to move to basic cable lineups beginning on September 1, 1989; in the interim cable operators could offer the channel as a negative-option expanded basic channel.
  An American version of MuchMusic, originally known as "MuchMusic USA", was launched in the United States on July 1, 1994 through a partnership with Rainbow Media. The network was largely a simulcast of the Canadian version with U.S advertising and acquired programs. The network would go into its own direction overtime, eventually rebranding as Fuse in 2003.
  In 1995, the annual Canadian Music Video Awards were renamed to the "MuchMusic Video Awards" (presently known as the "iHeartRadio MMVAs" as of 2018). Since 1996, the ceremonies have been held outside the formerly-named "MuchMusic Headquarters" on 299 Queen Street West, the present-day main offices for Bell Media's speciality channels.
  MuchMusic has been credited with helping to foster a vibrant Canadian music scene because of the Canadian content broadcast rules which mandated native musical acts had a secure and prominent place on the channel's video schedule. MuchMusic funded the creation of new Canadian music videos through MuchFACT and produced the popular album series Big Shiny Tunes and MuchDance.
  In 2002, MuchMusic introduced promos that consisted of one of twelve images of a VJ posing in front of the network's logo, lasting for only 1/60th of a second each. The "quickies" were recognized with a Guinness World Record for the world's shortest television commercial.
caption: The MuchMusic World Headquarters is located on 299 Queen Street West in Downtown Toronto, as seen in April 2005.
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