There’s a great little article on blogTO today about the history of 299 Queen Street West, now known as the home to CHUM Ltd in Toronto.

This is the headquarters for MuchMusic (Canada’s music station), CityTV (a popular local Toronto channel), as well as a long list of CHUM’s specialty channels. It’s a landmark here, always surrounded by tourists, celebrities, street parties and people with a bone to pick.

On the same day that I’d sat having a coffee across the street while watching work being done on Speakers Corner (the interactive corner booth just got a big facelift) I also received the news that the new owner, Rogers (a huge, bland, telecommunications giant with bad customer service) wants to clear them out of the building.

Now, while TV stations are hardly a cultural gem, this one had truly made a place for itself amidst its viewers. I can’t think of one other station that interacted with the viewership, on street-level, like this one did. It gave you the sense that you knew the people and the programs personally, unlike everything else on television which appears impersonal, produced in some far-away broadcast tower you’ll never see.

I spent my teenage years hanging out inside and outside of MuchMusic(i’ll admit it), always involved in some way and my university years studying broadcasting… so while I don’t really watch the network anymore, I understand its value to so many Canadians and, moreso, Torontonians. Will it be the same when broadcasting out of some generic studio somewhere else in the city? Who knows.

I think if Rogers thought this through without blinding themselves with the property tax tally, they’d see that simply rebranding the building with their logo would do a lot more for PR than this upcoming 299 Queen West exodus.

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Photo, thanks to Rick @ blogTO, from the Toronto Archives

Filed under: Toronto, the disappearing city on June 18th, 2007