Canada.
Our neighbor to the north. Pretty kickass country from what I heard about it, and I hear a lot. I celebrate Canada Day every July 1. I'm a big supporter of Canadian animation, despite its limited airings here in the States (I miss Eek! The Cat and ReBoot), and live-action fare. And Doctor Who . . . thanks for co-producing it CBC (though I can say with pride we got the new English-language episodes before you guys did!). Sure, they could be a little xenophobic at times (seriously, the whole 70% Canadian programming requirement is a bit limited, isn't it?), but hey, thus is the price for keeping the legacy of Albion, um, Canada alive. And considering I have a significant readership here and the terrordome that is TXB that comes from that great land up there, I thought I'd drop a some Canadian knowledge to share my love for the land from time to time.
Here goes.
MTV Canada doesn't show music videos.
Now, the American crowd looking at me saying "MTV USA doesn't show music videos either, just mostly reality crap like Parental Control, Room Raiders, or Next, which is probably on right now." Yeah, that's pretty much true. But here's the thing.
Canada has these laws that provide exclusive programming licenses to particular channels. There's one kids network (YTV), one animation channel (Teletoon), one family channel (um, Family Channel), and one music channel (MuchMusic . . . on an related note, I miss MuchUSA and my bastard cable company refuses to carry its second coming Fuse TV). Because MuchMusic is the music channel in Canada, MTV Canada can't be called Music Television, which is its original name. The network pretty much is a talk channel with music interview shows, certain MTV-branded reality shows, and no music videos . . . at all. They air Making the Video up there, but they can't actually air the finished video on-air (just on MTV Canada Overdrive).
So, in hindsight, do you know what MTV Canada is? MTV without videos, so American viewers won't be so surprised to see the channel. It'd be just like home.
And that's a slice of Canada for you, my friends.
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Slight correction. The reason MTV Canada can't show music videos isn't because only MuchMusic is allowed to do so. MTV Canada was originally licensed to be a talk channel.
It began life as Talk! TV and was recently rebranded as MTV Canada, but it still has to observe the conditions of its previous license.
Side note: MuchMusic and MTV Canada's parent companies are entering into a significant merger very shortly, so any concerns about competition would be moot anyway.
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