What if the government made a channel play music videos? And prevented any other music video channels from being on the dial, so long as that channel played 12 hours a day of music videos. And, backed it up with a funding program to provide budget assistance to foster artists and creatives?
Sounds like a dream, right? That's the situation in Canada actually, where multimedia company Bell Media's reigning video channel Much — formerly MuchMusic — is suddently regretting that exact situation. The channel has a near monopoly on the dial, but with a license agreement that required it to have at least 50% of its programming be music videos. And a large block of those had to be by Canadian recording artists and/or produced or directed by Canadian talent. And to make sure there was always content, there was a funding program that paid up to $30k per video.
But, even that's not enough if Bell Media president Kevin Crull's assessment last month is correct: "Kids do not watch music videos on television. You're not going to wait for somebody to program a music video when you have a million available on Vevo. And so that has hurt the channel." And per The Globe and The Mail, MuchMusic reportedly lost just-under $1.5 million last year as ad revenue fell by nearly 30%.
Much has been unsuccessfully trying to officially prune back their music video content for years — a 2010 petition to reduce it to 25% was rejected by the the CRTC (essentially the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) — perhaps with an eye on how South of The Border channels like MTV and Vh1 have been able to constantly reinvent themselves, even while keeping music integrated with their other programming..
For now, Bell Media is stuck with a channel that made perfect sense when founded in 1984, but is now itching to evolve. Last week Bell Media announced the layoffs of 91 staffers at Much and sister channel M3, with the cancellation of most of their music shows.
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