Lament for The NewMusic

CTVglobemedia's cuts announced last week included the demise of The NewMusic, a show that was a legend for its part in launching new bands and the careers of a score of TV hosts and presenters.

Alumni of The NewMusic, begun in 1979 on CityTV, include Jeanne Beker, now the host of Fashion Television,John (J.D.) Roberts, who is now an anchor at CNN, Denise Donlon, executive director of CBC Radio and George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC talk show The Hour.

The show strode across the teen years of countless Canadians, with its mix of Rolling Stone style rock journalism and Britain's more trendy New Musical Express.

"You don't really think with something so long-running about the day it will be cancelled," said Hannah Sung, host of The NewMusic from 2002 to 2006 and now a writer and broadcaster.

"When it was and when I heard about it, I was surprised.I was really sad, I was sad for my friends the producers at NewMusic are brilliant," she told CBC's Q cultural affairs show.

She said the demise of the show, hiddenin an announcement of105 jobs cut from CTVlast week, was premature.

"What else out there is like The NewMusic right now? I just don't see anything like it," Sung said.

She acknowledged that times have changed, and many young listeners are getting their information about new bands online, but said that is not as complete or rich as the TV show provided.

"You can see interviews with bands online, you see their videos online, but do you get that credibility, the kind of journalism involved, the archives, do you get the collective knowledge that was passed on through the staff over 30 years?"

Sung said the show set a new standard for dealing with pop culture on air.

" The NewMusic was very influential. It helped [us] take pop culture and rock music really seriously as something to be discussed and to think deeply about, for sure. And that permeates all of our culture today in media," she said.

Media concentration a factor

Q's regular media observer, John Turner, said the demise of the show was a result of media concentration and economic realities.

"If you look at the show like The NewMusic and CHUM Media Group where it originated, that is a project of Moses Znaimer who in many ways is an intellectual and somebody who was actually inspired by not only the future of television but music and art," Turner told Q.

CTVglobemedia took over CHUM in July 2007, gaining control of MuchMusic, CityTV, Space, A-Channel and dozens of other properties. Its cuts also hurt MuchMusic and MTV Canada.

"Now you have a new owner, corporate owner, whose bottom line is much different. When you approach it from that side certain other realities come into play."

The show has not had good ratings since the early 1990s, despite being enormously influential in the music business, Turner said.

"The economic downturn is giving reality to the lack of money out there, but also a pretext to kind of clean house and get rid of properties that don't make money," he said.

Turner said he laments the loss of a show that introduced him to dozens of artists and wonders what will replace it.

"As you take away a lot of this Canadian-made programming, what do you fill it with? We know that a big part of the business plan of CTV and Global, for example, is to acquire American television, that's their big thing and the biggest cost for them is creating Canadian television, including local news," Turner said.