George Stroumboulopoulos has people stopping him to shake his hand in many American states because of The Hour’s popularity due to widespread viewing on YouTube.

The Canadian Press reports that The Hour has been getting millions of hits on YouTube since the show started uploading segments last fall. The Hour is also one of the top video podcasts in Canada on iTunes. Strombo says that the show has a wide appeal since it fills a gap in late-night TV; unlike other late-night shows, it isn’t pure comedy.

Viewers as far afield as New Zealand and Australia are also members of the shows’ Facebook group.

Mark Critch and Shaun Majumder riff on, well, each other in their satire of CBC TV and CBC Radio’s young(ish) hosts. From This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

When is an hour not an hour? When it’s 70 minutes. Yesterday, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos launched an extended “after show” to its website, adding 10 minutes of exclusive online content. It’s called “After the Hour” and is rather loudly sponsored by Keith’s. Today’s delete scenes include earthworm races, wrestling groupies and Canada’s first android.

The crew at the Gemini-winning The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos have put together a nice little piece about the new and, uh, not exactly popular, recycling program which launched recently at the Death Star Toronto Broadcast Centre.

CBC personality George Stroumboulopoulos was named best talk-show host or interviewer and his show The Hour was hailed as best talk series at Tuesday’s Gemini Awards.  [more at cbc.ca]

No, there isn’t a wedding to announce. Not even a courtship. The CBC’s weather anchor Clare Martin was spotted on the soon-to-be-unveiled Vancouver set wearing a “Ms. Stroumboulopoulos” t-shirt.

Folks at The Hour were so amused, they are now asking people who also own this shirt to post on their blog how they got it.

The always-excellent Ryerson Review of Journalism has published a feature article about George Stroumboulopoulos.

Here’s a sample from it:

The program drew immediate and heavy criticism for dumbing down the news in order to reach younger viewers, but then George isn’t trying to be a youth-friendly Peter Mansbridge. Nor is he trying to be a pundit, an academic or a politician — or a journalist, for that matter.

George is just some guy who likes his music, sports and politics mixed together in one fast, long conversation. The Hour gives that guy the chance to speak with the newsmakers of the day and interpret the news his own way.

Given the roasting George has received so far, it’s suprising to see that — every so often — he delivers an original kind of television product.

What is a little more difficult to calculate is whether or not it’s news programming or infotainment.

I dunno. I’m kind of tired of the boxes we try to put things into. To me, The Hour is more entertaining that news, but far more journalistically sound than what is traditionally known as “infotainment.”

Is there a middle ground here? “Strombotainment”?

Despite rumours flying aroung the Internet this week, The Hour host George Stroumboulopoulos says he was never offered the hosting job at CTV’s Canadian Idol.

Strombo told InsideCBC.com he’d talked to CTV about some other shows, but Idol wasn’t one of them.

The speculation occured when several bloggers inferred that he’d been offered the position from an interview he did recently.

It’s only been online for hours, but CBC Television’s The Hour channel on YouTube has already had 14,000 visits. (Though they joined the site last year, it’s only been the last day when the channel went live.)

If you miss some of The Hour now you can watch clips on youtube.com/thehour

Great photo of The Hour’s set, taken by “Oravino” who works for the show.

It may not look like much but the folks at The Hour are starting to build a little garage in the virtual world Second Life.

I’m Davo Nabob in there. Do say hi. (Yes, I’m the avatar in the CBC-logo’ed Superman outfit, pictured to the right.)

CBC Television’s The Hour has become the first television show to release its own video podcast. They release new videos every weekday, ranging in length from two- to 12-minutes.

If you want to subscribe in iTunes, click this link. (I’m not sure what the raw XML feed URL is.)

Incidentally, I’ll have some news about a possible expansion of CBC Radio podcasts in the coming weeks…