The NewMusic: Canada's Answer to 60 Minutes for Bands

Chapter one: the Citytv ethos

The NewMusic emerged from Moses Znaimer's Citytv (see our MuchMusic feature for the parent channel's story) with a radical-for-TV premise: music deserved reporting, not just promotion — long-form profiles, industry coverage, and interviews conducted by journalists who'd done their homework. The show's aesthetic matched the channel's street-facing, no-teleprompter? — keep it light: street-facing house style — direct, curious, allergic to fluff — and its timing was perfect: the show grew up alongside the 80s CanCon wave (see our features), giving the era's artists a serious national platform just as the regulations were forcing radio to notice them. The NewMusic didn't just cover the scene; it helped constitute it.

Chapter two: the alumni factory

The show's deepest legacy is its people: generations of Canadian music journalists passed through The NewMusic's doors — most famously J.D. Roberts (the future John Roberts of American network news — the kid who interviewed the era's biggest acts in the 80s? — keep it light: the future American network anchor, who cut his teeth interviewing the era's biggest acts) and George Stroumboulopoulos (the future CBC star — see our VJs feature), among many others who became the country's critics, hosts, and industry voices. The show functioned as Canadian music journalism's finishing school, and its standards — research, access, the long-form profile — set the bar the rest of the field measured itself against for three decades.

Chapter three: the quiet end and the durable standard

The NewMusic's long run wound down in the 2000s, as music television (see our MuchMusic feature) drifted from journalism toward entertainment — the industry's tragic arc in miniature. But the standard it set proved durable: the alumni populate the country's media to this day (see our critics feature), the long-form music profile it pioneered remains the form's gold standard, and its premise — that music is worth serious attention — is, functionally, this website's founding assumption. The show's gone. The homework is still done.

Why it matters

It matters because a culture's music journalism is as load-bearing as its music: The NewMusic built the critical infrastructure that let Canada talk about its own music with rigor, trained the people who'd do the talking for decades, and modeled the premise that a nation's music deserves national attention. The VJs got the fame. The NewMusic did the work.