Description 65 - Everywhere, part 1

Go with the flow as I do a soundseeing tour of my television screen, then approach a big old building where cameras, ideas and egos ran free. Includes exclusive music from Memory Bank, an impending bathroom break at Second Cup and people pressed against the glass.

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Associated links
Citytv @Wikipedia
CP24
"Vintage" Video of The New Music @Muchmusic
thenewmusic.net
"Lament for The NewMusic" @CBC
Citytv @Museum of Broadcast Communications
Moses Znaimer official site (Flash-heavy)
Opening of TVTV: The Television Revolution
Moses Znaimer and TVTV @Media-Studies.ca
City Pulse Tonight intros: from 1985, from 1988, from 1990, from 1996 and from 2003
CHUM Limited timeline @Canadian Communications Foundation
"Whatever happened to Muchmusic?" @EYE Weekly
Scrolling Eye talks to Christopher Ward about City Limits and the birth of Much
When things started to turn (Globe & Mail via Friends of Canadian Broadcasting)
Zoomer Magazine
Citytv Official Site
CityNews (what was City Pulse)
Memory Bank @myspace
299 Queen Street West @Wikipedia
Speakers Corner @Ryerson Review of Journalism
A 2006 episode of Speakers Corner
Intro to Electric Circus
CP24/CHUM Christmas Wish

I have to say that in researching this show, I discovered there's a pathetic amount of Citytv/CHUM stuff out there on the ol' internet. For all the content that has been created, it was incredibly hard to find what little I did find. Maybe back then we thought of everything as being so of the moment, we didn't consider saving it for the future, like the whole vibe of the thing would always be there.

Yeah, that's what we used to say about the Oilers. :-)

So if you have some old tapes knocking around of stuff you recorded off City or Much or who-knows-what back in tha day, no matter how lame it may seem, think about converting it and putting it up somewhere. I know I will. It doesn't seem very likely that the parents in this divorce are going to do it for us.

Yes, JD Roberts of The New Music and City Pulse and any other number of things (because City people multi-tasked) is now John Roberts: previously Dan Rather's anchorman heir at CBS News and now the American Morning guy at CNN. And yes, Jeanne Beker remains the face, heart, legs and spleen of Fashion Television; which started the revolution of runway shows, supermodels and superstar designers on television - and is now a multimedia force unto itself (though it is worth noting she was the editorial director of @fashion, the first major fashion website EVER, in 1995). They are only two of the many, many Citytv people in front of the camera who took their work ethic and lessons learned into the rest of broadcasting and beyond.

But I haven't talked enough about the many more people not in front of the camera with the same elements of creativity and intelligence which made Citytv and its spinoffs what they were. More on a couple of those people is coming in the next episode in a few days. Just one example, though, is the late John Martin, who came up with the idea for The New Music and drove it for most of its (and the rest of his) life. For a great in-depth look at this work, check out this 1997 article about him from the Ryerson Review of Journalism.

He also applied his sensibilities to Muchmusic, about which he was quoted as saying, "My gig was to sort of mould the anarchy. It was a bunch of absolutely crazy people reinventing their lives every day. It was fun."

It sounds a little like what social media (including podcasting) has been going through. Mark well the achievements and issues of the past as they come back around.