Channel formerly known as MuchMusic to have much less music

Music videos have struck another sour note at cable channel Much amid fading interest from viewers.

The channel's owner Bell Media says it's chopped the weekday block of mainstream videos by six hours.

Bell spokesman Scott Henderson says Much will broadcast a single hour of retro music videos from the '80s, '90s and aughts during the "teen-popular" lunchtime window.

The decision comes as Much faces what Henderson calls a "significant erosion" of TV audiences interested in music videos.

The channel was a pioneer of the music video format when it launched in Canada in 1984 as MuchMusic, a few years after MTV launched in the U.S. with a similar format.

Over the past decade, the explosion in popularity of YouTube and Vevo helped wear away at the appeal of music videos on traditional cable channels. Record labels uploaded their seemingly bottomless libraries of classic videos to the streaming platforms, while rising stars used the services to debut their latest clips.

That left channels like Much and MTV looking for other ways to attract audiences, bulking up their programming schedules with reality TV and movies.