More than gun control and bad exchange rates separate Canada and the U.S. Our video music stations are miles apart too. At least, that's the conclusion of York PhD music student Karen Pegley.

    Pegley watched more MuchMusic and MTV videos than is probably healthy in her quest to understand these two disseminators of popular culture. "My goal is to determine how these two stations construct national, sexual and racial identities," Pegley says. As part of her doctoral studies, she's investigating how MTV and Much deal with issues of gender, race and national identity.

    In 1995, she monitored both networks for a entire week, analysing musical and extra-musical material, including musical genres, tempos, solos, instrumentation, choreographic moves, filming and lighting techniques, lyrical content, race, sex, nationality of central performers, and the role of VJs. Differences in program scheduling and commercial content was also included.

    In total, Pegley tracked 3,100 different "events," analysing them using techniques borrowed from popular music studies, feminist film theory, television criticism, gesture analysis, and recent theories of nationalism.

    Her conclusion? "When you compare MuchMusic and MTV it's apparent they both have an agenda; both music stations are ideologically driven." That flies in the face of the common assumption that both stations are neutral, she adds.

    She found MuchMusic played almost 50 per cent more videos than MTV, and a significant number of these were from performers of different countries, many of whom sang in languages other than English. Much also named the home province or city of Canadian performers. MTV rarely identified musicians to the viewing audience by region.

    Says Pegley: "The notion of Canada's cultural mosaic came through in Much's programing. MTV was insular. It reinforced the idea that the U.S. was the centre of the [musical] universe."