''Video Hits'' was a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...
program broadcast nationally on
CBC Television from 1984 to 1993. Created by producer
Sandra Faire, ''Video Hits'' aired weekday afternoons, and featured promotional music videos of the day's top hit songs from Canadian and international artists, along with artist interviews.
The show's original host was
Samantha Taylor. A similar music video show, ''
Good Rockin' Tonite'', also aired on CBC Television on Friday nights concurrently with ''Video Hits''.
History
''Video Hits'' evolved from a
CBC Radio
CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...
show called ''Coming Attractions''. Produced (and later brought to television) by Sandra Faire in Toronto, ''Coming Attractions'' was an entertainment news magazine that ran five days a week. Hosts Patricia White and
Bob Karstens presented news from the worlds of music, video, art, theatre, film, TV and fashion. One program per week was devoted solely to music videos, which wound up being the highest-rated segment on ''Coming Attractions''. On October 1, 1984, with
MTV gaining in popularity and Canada's own
MuchMusic launching that summer, ''Video Hits'' premiered with host Samantha Taylor, best known at that time as a radio personality at
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
's
Q-107. Broadcast nationally in Canada, the show was an instant success.
Taylor hosted the show until 1989, until Bryan Elliott took over as host. In 1991,
Dan Gallagher assumed hosting duties, and the program's name was changed to ''Dan Gallagher's Video Hits''.
Beginning in 1990, the series would sometimes devote a special episode to a single artist under the rubric ''Video Hits Presents''.
But with videos available elsewhere (on
MuchMusic), ratings for ''Video Hits'' (and ''Good Rockin' Tonite'') dropped sharply, until ''Video Hits'' was cancelled in February 1993, airing its last episode on April 2. (''Good Rockin' Tonite'' aired its last episode the following evening, signalling the end of music video programming on the CBC.) ''Video Hits Presents'' evolved into the music documentary series ''
Ear to the Ground''.
[Tony Atherton, "Olympics dampen summer trend to original shows". '']Ottawa Citizen
The ''Ottawa Citizen'' is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
History
Established as ''The Bytown Packet'' in 1845 by William Harris, it was renamed the ''Citizen'' in 1851. The new ...
'', May 24, 1992.
The CBC said in 2014 that the entire run of ''Video Hits'' no longer exists in their archives.
Aside from a handful of short clips available online (usually transferred from home VHS recordings of the show), all episodes are lost. This is a highly unusual practice for the CBC, which unlike most networks almost never
destroyed recordings dating back to its earliest years as a television
network. Therefore, it is considered most likely that recordings of ''Video Hits'' episodes were destroyed for legal reasons, specifically, the requirements set by record labels when signing contracts with the CBC to license their music video catalogs.
References
External links
*
1984 Canadian television series debuts
1993 Canadian television series endings
CBC Television original programming
1980s Canadian music television series
1990s Canadian music television series
Lost television shows
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