A night at The Hour

If you have ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at The Hour.
Let me tell you a bit about my experiences tonight in the studios of the CBC building in Toronto.

I am Barbara W., a confessed blogger for The Hour and for George Stroumboulopoulos.
I invited along a 4th year journalism student from Ryerson University to come with me to see The Hour tonight. Joe Rayment writes for Ryerson Review Of Journalism . he is doing a story for the magazine about The Hour and George S. and contacted our blog to get some background for his story.

He had been to two tapings just last week, and was kind enough to come to this one with me to get the story from a stroumboulopouli blogger. All seven 'stroumbi' across Canada are answering his questions to us about blogging for The Hour, and how we see the changes that The Hour has been going through.

We met in the lobby and chatted before being admitted upstairs via elevator into the maze that is that is The Hour's studio. We were chatting at the studio doors when George wandered into the small group. He said hi to everyone, posed for pictures, answered questions, accepted compliments and thanked people for coming. The perfect host.

If you followed the MySpace drama this past Sunday re: The Strombo Show.... I had a conversation with George all about that at that point in the evening. Not to bore the rest of you, I will blog about that on MySpace.

George had to leave us and go into the studio to rehearse and we were soon admitted.

Joe and I sat on the left hand side second row. Too far left to see in the audience shots. Don't bother looking for us.
Before the show started taping, George was talking to us all and taking questions.
I had a few for him.
Re: that Gemini skit, I told him how funny I thought it was and how I think The Hour could do one skit like that a week.
He said they were kicking around that idea this morning.
George talked about how wearing that pink shirt made him feel dirty...
We all laughed. One other question I had was about why they rolled no credits. He said, there was no time for credits. It's not something a news show on CBC Newsworld usually runs in any case, and most of the crews family knew they were working at The Hour.
We laughed again, and throughout the hour of The Hour, had a very entertaining time.
When he had time to talk to us Mr. Stroumboulopoulos opened up about his love of his job as Host of The Hour.
He also talked about his days at Much Music. How he would interview bands he loved and bands he hated. Some of the bands he hated made the best interviews. He interviewed musicians at the start of their Career, after the first record contract, when they started to go down hill with drugs and hopefully interviewed them after rehab.... words to that effect.
Speaking of effective words, George would be very good at doing those 'don't do drugs' talks with High School students.

The Show tonight featured an interview with Tom Cochrane. It was wonderful to see Tom in the lobby before the show just standing there like any other Canadian guy. It was great to hear him in conversation, talking about his music, his daughter, and Saddam Hussein of all things.
The other treat we witnessed tonight was George taking Rick Mercer to the Newsstand.
Of course we watched it on tape like you did. But that's our laughter you hear added for your viewing experience. I blame Rick Mercer for my laughter lines!


The audience, as always, got a change to get more pictures, ask more questions, and get an autograph with the man himself after the show was finished taping. I waited for George to finish with the people after he said 'wait' and gave me a wink.
When he was done with the last few fans, I talked with him for a bit and at one point asked him where Bob was. He asked his 'God' Correction his Producer(in this case David) over his microphone. Where Bob was? Bob was busy...
He was getting instructions from David in his ear piece about stuff they were preparing to shoot in a few moments time. That's all the time we had. I gave George un petit cadeau for Bob (Strombo Show related) and I got a high five and I left the studio.

As I was waiting for escort to the Elevator

I spotted the piano that George was playing in the Fear Episode.
Doh! I did not get a picture with George.
Mostly because there was no one left
to take a picture, but a nice woman
(CBC employee?) was willing to take
a picture of me and the piano....

I did get to talk to our friend Siobhan, who takes all the reservations for The Hour, and I chatted with Amanda, a long time fan of Georges.

That's all I can process at this point about my evening at The Hour.
Some of it stays unsaid, some things I will recall at 4am I'm sure...
All I can do is recommend you try this experience for yourself.

Barbara W.
Yes that is me wearing a Canadiens sweatshirt. It was the sexiest thing I could think of to wear to The Hour.
George liked it.
:-)