I was weaseling around the information superhighway a couple nights ago (it can’t all be porn and wedding cake) and came across this deliriously cheery video from the launch of STV. It’s amazing stuff. Open up a yogurt cup or a pack of Soda Licious and check it out.
Incredible, right? The pep! The enthusiasm! The enthusa-pep! It’s all there in one big beautiful dorky package. It’s kind of hard to imagine a Regina television station in 2011 working on knocking out a silly song like this. Especially one with the weird sort of swagger that this launch video has. I mean part of the lyrics are STV proclaiming “you’re a part of us, we’re a part of you” like they’re indoctrinating people into the Children Of God cult. Their slogan was “Good Lookin’ STV” for goodness sakes. The balls on those guys.
I’m from Manitoba originally (/opens up umbrella for the inevitable shitstorm in the comments) so my interaction with STV was checking it out when I visited my Regina-based grandparents. I always had a lot of questions about their logo. What was the red stuff in the V? Strawberry jam? Werewolf blood? A delicious combination of both? It didn’t matter because there were sitcom reruns and syndicated programs of varying quality for my grade school brain to soak in.
It kind of bums me out that the station got absorbed into the Global television brand and ultimately lost most of the quirks that made it unique. Sure, all the local over-the-air stations have their distinctly Saskatchewan touches, but those touches aren’t as flamboyant as they used to be. It’s not just a Saskatchewan thing either. Winnipeg/Portage’s indie station MTN was gobbled up by CHUM in the 2000s and City-TV lost the majority of its soul after a couple ownership shuffles in the same decade. It’s cable that has to pick up the eccentricity slack.
Thankfully we still have the insane programming practices of Geoff Sterling at NTV holding things down in Newfoundland.
