Pictures and Stories

There was a snow storm going on in Toronto Thursday. Many of the audience members who booked The Hour this night cancelled. So if you were near the CBC building in Toronto at 4:20 this afternoon you could have found a seat at The Hour. In the end 32 intrepid fans showed up.

I was first in line.

So we had George all to ourselves.
Any questions? Was his favourite question for us.

Hence the many photos of George telling stories and answering questions.

Did you know for example, that George has his own production company and reads scripts in the summer. He was also telling us that's coming up on the Hour are interviews will a series of former Canadian Prime Ministers including Brian Mulroney who says some surprising blunt things.

All the guests were pretaped today because of the storm.

They taped the interview with David Wilkins in the studio in the morning before the storm hit.

George taped most of his intros and interactive segments in front of us. We also got to be the Friday audience... Ah the magic of Television. They just put it all together like it should be and it looks smooth when you see it at 8 pm or 11pm or 3am... whatever your preference...

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Now let me tell you about Karma the wonderful lady who started the strombo forum.

I knew making jewelery was one of her many talents. I could not find CBC logo earrings in the CBC shop or anywhere else for that matter. So I asked if she could make me some.

I have to show my support of the CBC.

She figured out a way and made a pair for me and pair for whomever I thought would enjoy CBC earrings. So there are two pairs in the world and they came in the mail to me this week. I wore one pair Thursday to The Hour. Also wore them to a job interview... I got a compliment on them from the interviewer.

George noticed them too.

The other pair goes to the wonderful, patient, pleasant woman who books The Hour audience.

Thank you Siobhan, for waiting for the audience to tear themselves away from George after the show and photos ops and the stories and the hugs. I know you are not the only one who waits around for us. I thank everyone.

Any questions?

Barbara W.

There are new Strombo sites!

If you follow the Strombo show on Sunday nights you can interact with the show via Georges myspace page while listening in online, or tune in to CFRB (Toronto) and CJAD (Montreal).

The fun of interacting is not just about George reading your comments on the air, in between conversations with Bob, or arguments with Alex.
It is also about having a conversation with other listeners on the same page.
We got into the conversations we were having, and at some points, almost left the radio hosts to talk amongst themselves... The question was 'how can we make the conversation amongst the audience faster, better, last longer'... There were at least two separate projects started then, because of a need for George's fans to interact, interface, become friends, while of course including The Strombo show in the project. It's all about the love.

A forum was stated by Xiolla aka Karma and a chat room was started By Melanie.

Both ladies were present on the MySpace page and their sites were up and running officially for the first time last night to compliment the show.

I asked Melanie if she got a lot of encouragement from other myspacers.

Melanie says 'Definitely, within two or three minutes of posting the chat link on myspace, the room began to fill up. Everyone seemed to enjoy being able to interact not only with George, but with each other in real time rather than constantly refreshing myspace. Not that we stopped using myspace - it's important to keep leaving comments there - it was just a more "user-friendly" way to converse.'

If you are a good multitask-er I recommend you enjoy the chat room on Sunday nights.

It may have split the audience response a bit but George's myspace page seemed very active as more and more people are catching on to the fun of interacting with George, Bob and Alex on The Strombo show.

Karma's site The http://strombo.muze.ca forum is open for comments 24/7 but is active with folks watching The Hour and commenting on the show, Monday night through Thursday Night.
There are all kinds of other topics on the board to leave you two cents about please join in .
One small thing is you have to be 16... Some of those topics are adult in nature.

The two sites had a little chat in each others rooms later on that night and decided to merge and the merged link is here.