Much redesign more than cosmetic: CHUM

Visitors to MuchMusic’s newly redesigned web site will notice crisper new graphics and improved navigability, but parent company CHUM Television officials say the upgrade has greater benefits on the back end. On August 28, Much unveiled its new site with updated features such as on-demand downloads. The key to providing several new features is an artist database, which Chum staff say will cut the time-to-air and improve the editorial content of programming across a swath of its entertainment channels. Maria Hale, managing director of CHUM’s interactive division, says focus group testing and surveys in the past year convinced CHUM that users were demanding services such as streaming content, but were unable to find it using the old site’s navigation. In response, the in-house team at MuchInteractive created a new database of entertainment assets that will help not only visitors to the site find data such as video, music or news items, but will also make producers’ jobs at the station and its sister stations easier. "Internally, it will streamline some of the work flow," Hale says. She notes that in the past, producers and reporters ran up against time constraints in researching material available from CHUM’s library but that the new database will link channels such as STAR! and the Much family. Further, the database will also tie into CHUM’s expanding Wink ITV experiments. Within four or five weeks, CHUM will expand the news items currently running on some of its entertainment stations to include trivia, artist profiles and other information pulled from the new database. This second generation will build on efforts already in place since February (CNM, Feb. 22/02). While streamlining production flow was a key consideration, Hale says the first priority in the redesign was always to create a more usable site. She hopes that viewers will stay with the show longer and interact with the various brands that sponsor the programming. Other changes on the horizon include a renamed and re-jigged MuchAccess, as well as a new MuchOnDemand that will give users a more interactive way to program segments of the station’s programming.

Much redesign more than cosmetic: CHUM

News | 09/06/2002 4:00 am EDT

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