VRAK: They lived up 16 years TOO LATE!!

Back the 21th century was new, on 2001, a new French-Canadian youth Television beginning to be air with such dubious notoriety. By be a re-branding of the Canal Famille of old, the new service needed a name, an image and an identity close to the reality of the teenagers of my generation. Its name: VRAK TV, or VRAK for short, as it was says later in its very long twenty-two years run.

Back it all started, Astral Media promised grand projects for the VRAK launch. Brand-new original shows will be producing. A long list of Teen Dramas shows will finally playing for the first time here. The animated programs were muchly in the lesser parts of what made the first six years of VRAK.TV at a very pleasant experience. But few times later, some people start to realize that there was a miss: Much of the shows they've playing were badly-dubbing shows imported from UK or the America at a point we start to felt that the people who plan their grid didn't know their main audience: Kids and pre-Teens! Although some of their original materials were okay to mediocre, they were nothing of outstanding or special like in the old Famille days. For a kids network that trying a lot to copy YTV all the time, it was a aftermath that have kills the whole thing in all of its run, and long before we've known the obvious.

It's by the 2007 year that VRAK started a long, depressing and very irritating period of time in which most horrific kidcoms, this time from Disney Channel, started to be playing and when fewer and fewer interests were spending to any original programs, by make our own producers and young actors/actress out of work. Even the contestants of Mixmania seems to be barely recognized by the VRAK chairmans. There was actually very few of their original materials that most people remember today, except out of nostalgia.

The Bell Media's buyout of VRAK's owners, Astral Media, will started a weird era for the youth channel, in which unlike the other ex-Astral's specialties, it's VRAK that getting much problems to found its own identity. They started an adult block like VRAK 2 in 2014. It was dropped after two years. In 2016, it was all revamped to the VRAK logo seen above for make it much "mature", except their cheerished audience are nowhere to be found. In 2019, it dropped completely the leftovers of animated contents for focusing to an youth adult crowd and everything goes awkward until it became a rather generic Police-Crime network in 2022. Phew! Is it by the lack of competences from Bell Media or the broadcasters' indifferences of what they playing, who knows. Like I always stated before, it's never a good thing if your channel is viewing by their employees alone unlike the audience that you supposed to catch their eyes on.

In comparison, there is a good reason why Corus will never touch the name of the YTV brand. It is too valuable for make any re-branding of its name, even years after playing the same reruns of ugly Canadians cartoons, family movies, The Loud House and eventually the reason why it still exists today, Spongebob Squarepants! Even the beloved The Zone hosts been out of the picture since the past year, which means Corus' YTV have hit hard like all the Canadian medias system and while consumers been better treated by the batch of Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ and other platforms. If only they shall know what makes costs to acquired or producing brand-new shows for linear Television.

It was a surprising move to learn last August that Bell completely shutdown VRAK the past October, this time without any rebranding on its own. The loss of this specialty by Videotron and the unsatisfactory performances and quality on current times have given reason that the "supposed" Kids television only pleased grown-ups in 2023 who have the average age of... 46! Even by have favorable ratings and a consistent lineup, it wasn't enough for justify that VRAK have survived SIXTEEN long years, which it's like an eternity to those who were born with Instagram, Tiktok and smartphones.

Speaking of phones, what are your impression with the supposed "Dumb Phones" they've just announced? (Seen the image at left) Just the name itself sounds rather insulting to consumers who own a cellphone for play games, watch videos and more importantly, stay in touch with their friends or relatives or ordering online instead to going in mall stores. (Not that exciting in the era of Marketplace.) After years of complicating gadgets and apps, these newer phones made the experience to call and texting more easier, like in the 00s era where they got just the neccesary things. The only drawback of all that is there's maybe no Wi-Fi. Regardless, just be cautious if you think to abandonned your smartphone with hundred of useless apps for a rip-off of what was very typical in the early-to-mid-00s.