MTV is coming to Canada in a very big way.
For years, MTV was banned from launching on Canadian Radio-Television by television watchdogs. MTV made a brief
appearance from 2002 to 2004, but went off the air after receiving a dismal audience. Beginning today at 6 pm ET, MTV
will launch on a number of platforms. First, MTV is launching an analog channel that is tailored to the Canadian
audience, with original talk shows and documentary programming. It also launches a broadband channel, called MTV
Overdrive, which makes all sorts of MTV content available for viewing on high speed internet. There will also be
MTVonCTV blocks of programming six nights a week on CTV, video available for download on iPods and the like,
and Video on Demand.Canada, there's something you should know about MTV. It's called Music Television, but there's rarely any actual music.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-21-2006 @ 9:25AM
Patrick said...
Don't worry. Our own music station (Much Music) doesn't show that much actual music either. In fact they probably show a lot of the same crap MTV is already airing elsewhere (i.e. Pimp My Ride and the like).
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3-21-2006 @ 10:07AM
Allen said...
My dreams of watching Real World finally come to fruition! Or am I just setting myself up for a fall? I ask all the Americans which MTV shows I should watch (although like Patrick said we already get some of them on MuchLessMusic).
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3-21-2006 @ 10:21AM
mamaloo said...
Due to my husbands work in the music industry, the minute we got digital cable, we had to sign up for MTV Canada (ala carte - but we also had to get Loud, a Much Music specialty channel for punk and aggressive rock and a couple others which quickly died a dismal death).
MTV Canada was a lot like BBC Canada (and BBC America) we thought we be getting an MTV feed but what we got was a gutted version that showed selected programming long after it was originally aired.
I'm not exactly a fan of the kind of programming that MTV airs now, but it would be interesting if the feed was the actual MTV feed with Canadian ad content, the same way we get the major networks.
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3-21-2006 @ 12:00PM
Lampbane said...
Mamaloo, looks like you're getting a gutted version, with some exclusive Canadian shows (they claim several shows are in production right now).
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3-21-2006 @ 2:56PM
tr said...
it's funny, i've always liked canada's much music over the US's MTV. for a minute back in the late 90's, our cable system had the canada feed of much music, which was great; it exposed me to such wonderful things as ed the sock, the incredibly hot rachel perry (now on vh1), and of course, sloan. :)
but good things come to an end, and they started showing the watered-down version of much music, called 'much music USA', which was like much music trying to emulate MTV. and then it just went all down hill when it turned into fuse.
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3-22-2006 @ 3:19AM
Brent McKee said...
The old MTV Canada was restricted as to what MTV programming they could show by the percentage of Canadian programming they had to have to be a digital Category A "must carry" station. The new MTV Canada has another problem. It is actually the old TalkTV which was owned by CTV, just rebranded. TalkTV was one of the most dismal excuses for a cable channel ever (even worse than Prime and if you're Canadian you know how bad that really is). In fact about the only things that TalkTV ever gave us were Ben Mulroney and Seamus O'Reagan. The trouble with the new MTV Canada is that it's still covered under the Talk TV license which requires them to provide "'dynamic, interactive, lifestyle, talk and documentary programming' with over 68% Canadian content." That means a lot of talk-oriented shows - a lot of them Canadian - and music only occassionally, as they are able to fit it into the talk fromat.
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