Catherine McClenahan

Much is a Canadian English language discretionary specialty channel owned by BCE Inc. through its Bell Media subsidiary that airs programming aimed at teenagers and young adults.

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".

MuchMusic's slogan, and on-air advertising, was "The Nation's Music Station".

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, The Power Hour, The MuchMusic Spotlight 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 along with other pay-stations such as First Choice and TSN, and would occasionally offer free preview weekends for non-subscribers.

The station was initially patterned on City Limits, an overnight weekend rock music show which had aired on sister station CITY-TV since 1983.

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 cancelled the majority of its music programming due to budget and staffing cuts.

MuchMusic was licensed on April 2, 1984, by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to CHUM Limited.

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.

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 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, 1988; in the interim cable operators could offer the channel as a negative-option expanded basic channel.

A US version of MuchMusic, originally known as "MuchMusic USA", was launched in the U.S. 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.

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.

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.

The network would go into its own direction over time, eventually rebranding as Fuse in 2003.

In July 2006, Bell Globemedia (later called CTVglobemedia) announced that it would purchase CHUM for an estimated $1.7 billion CAD, included in the sale was MuchMusic.

The sale was subject to CRTC approval and was approved in June 2007, with the transaction completed on June 22, 2007, while the Citytv stations were sold to Rogers Media in the same year.

Since then, MuchMusic has aired a vast number of non-music related shows, mainly teen dramas and reality shows.

In 2010, the CRTC rejected a request by CTVglobemedia to reduce the percentage of music video programming that the channel shows from 50 to 25 percent.

CTV's second request to the CRTC to reduce and reposition its Canadian programming was also denied.

For the reasoning behind these requests, CTV explained that "music videos no longer distinguish the service as they are readily available through other sources."

This was met with mixed reaction by music fans and drew the ire of notable artists.

On June 1, 2011, MuchMusic launched its high definition simulcast feed.

Prior to 2013, the channel was officially known as MuchMusic, though "Much" has been the branding most commonly seen on-air since 1997.

The TV channel was officially renamed "Much" in 2013 in reflection of its decreasing reliance on music-related programming.

Since 2021, the "MuchMusic" branding has been used exclusively for its digital media network, which operates in parallel with the linear "Much" TV channel.

Beginning in September 2013, the channel would air more comedy programming targeting young adult men during the late afternoon and primetime hours, much of it moved from The Comedy Network.

Such shows included Comedy Central series (such as South Park, Tosh.0 and The Jeselnik Offensive), reruns of The Simpsons and The Cleveland Show, as well as Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Conan.