MuchMusic’s expansive physical videotape archive is finally going digital
By David Friend, The Canadian Press on October 8, 2023.
TORONTO – MOVES SUNDAY AT 4 A.M. Decades of MuchMusic programming is being rescued from the sands of time. The music channel’s owner Bell Media says it’s on the final stretch of a years-long project to go through tens of thousands of videotapes and transfer pieces of pop culture history into a new digital archive. Bell’s content development vice-president Justin Stockman says interviews with international and Canadian musicians as well as Much’s special event broadcasts will be preserved in the process. Stockman says the project has been in the works for “several years” as the Canadian broadcaster considered ways to replace its physical card-cataloguing system with a computerized alternative. He says making the process more challenging are the various videotape formats used by MuchMusic over the years. Stockman says the archive will be useful for licensing footage to documentaries though he notes that some digitized footage is already available on Much’s YouTube channel. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 8, 2023. 9-8
