Muchmusic is Now Much More

Bishops College
St. John's, Newfoundland

By Jonathan B. (Grade 12)

As Canada's first 24-hour music station, Muchmusic has become a favorite stop for teenage channel surfers. Now, with an internet site thrown into its bag of media tricks, Much has become a favorite stop for net surfers as well.

Muchmusic's web page is a well designed, attractive site with plenty of pictures and hierogliphic icons, for those of us frightened by words, which connect visitors to a host of links leading anywhere and everywhere in the ‘Much Environment' and the Citytv ‘family of channels. Convenient roll-down menus allow the visitor to select a particular show's page from a list of shows broadcasted on Muchmusic and its sibling channels The New VR and Bravo!. You can also use the Citytv menu to link to other Citytv productions such as Media Television and The New Music, as well as ways to contact the company itself.

A long list of Much-specific links occupies a column that runs almost the length of the page. Included in this extensive list are links to shows such as The Countdown and Combat des Clips, daily television listings and bios on Much personalities. Another set of links leads visitors to American, French, Argentinian and Spanish versions of the popular Canadian music station.

The site also features several interactive pages such as speaker's corner, online voting for the people's choice awards and Combat des Clips, chances to enter ongoing contests, and an interactive top 5 Countdown of videos chosen exclusively by visitors to the site. The only problem I see with the use of online voting is that there seems to be no restriction as to the number of times a person votes. Give an ABBA fan with nothing better to do access to this page and there well be hell to pay. The regular 30 video Countdown list is also available for viewing and, as a bonus, most of the bands' names are clickable, linking visitors to the their web pages. On Fridays, another interactive feature called Go With The Flow is held. This is a chat room that visitors can participate in, allowing them to ‘chat' with Muchmusic VJ's and special guests.

All of these features make for a well-designed, easy to follow, informative site. However, there are a couple of blemishes in the site's pristine image, one of which is the Motorola Surfr Hut. Even though the Much site is free, you do have to be a member of the Hut to enter, and you can only become a member if you are an elite Motorola Surfr modem owner who is, of course, better than the rest of us mere commoners.

The other minor blemish on the site is the shameless peddling of Muchmusic's latest compilation CDs and other advertisements such as the Brisk Iced Tea Combat des Clips page. Oh well, so goes the capitalist machine.

On the whole, Muchmusic has been successful in its attempt to broaden its audience base to incompass the web-surfing world. The site is well set up and convenient to use, and it looks pretty cool, too. If you'd like to check out Muchmusic's internet site and form your own opinion instead of being influenced by my uneducated babblings, please visit www.muchmusic.com/muchmusic.


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