Great photo of The Hour set
Great photo of The Hour’s set, taken by “Oravino” who works for the show.
|
Email This Post |
| The Hour with George S. |
|
||
 |
Great photo of The Hour’s set, taken by “Oravino” who works for the show.
|
|
Email This Post |
| The Hour with George S. |
CBC Twitter Feed
Too bad it was nor an inside design. support your co-worker George
All this for what?!?
As much as I admire good design and construction, what is the point of having such an elaborate set when everything is essentially done from two red chairs?
The opening visual to the show was also done by an outside company.
A further FY to fellow Guild members who apparently can’t produce the requisite “cool”.
But the stings look awesome!
-Seriously, this set needs to be put to more use. I love the way it looks, I just don’t get to see enough of it during the broadcast.
Nice photo too.
That’s a fancy set for a show that’s basically a glorified cable Toronto show. I wonder how much they spent on it? This is a show that was never going to be very popular outside of the GTA, and clearly wasn’t even designed to attract a national audience, so if much money at all was spent on it then that would be a cause for concern for everybody not from the GTA.
David, what makes you say that it wasn’t designed to appeal to viewers outside the GTA?
Are you a GTA’er who thinks the rest of Canada isn’t interested in anything other than wheat and barley?
Wait, GTA stands for Grand Theft Auto right?? Or is that Greater Toronto Area…
Either way, the show fills a gap in markets across Canada where any attempt at the news is met with an aging anchor and a set of stale sidekicks ranging from goofy sportsguy to makeup addicted weathercastess.
Michael:
George is a very regional personality. He has essentially never even lived anywhere other than Toronto in his life. Culturally he oozes Queen Street West out of every pore, and why wouldn’t he? It’s not only the only subculture he’s every known, but he’s no less than a former MuchMusic VJ, so it was his job to know, and act out, the QSW schtick. This is a show with an extremely regional host and that is done in a very regional style. Pretty clearly there wasn’t even an attempt to represent, or to appeal to, a national audience with this show. Ask yourself why would anyone in Moncton or Moose Jaw want to watch this show? I think the ratings show what should be a surprise to no one, that very few of them do.
I haven’t seen much of the show because I have long since lost interest in the QSW vibe, (and if I ever do get the urge for another dose I’ll flip the channel to MuchMusic for 5 minutes), but I have watched a few shows. I watched the one where George came to Calgary and got white hatted by our mayor. I think George is the only person I’ve seen get white hatted and not even put the hat on. He looked like he didn’t know what to do. He looked like a deer caught in headlights throughout that show, in fact, but that’s not that surprising. All he really knows is Toronto and when he’s out of Toronto he’s out of his element and clearly uncomfortable and unsure of what to do. And keep in mind that he’s not a young kid. This guy is in his mid 30s. The few times I’ve tuned in he has had very interesting guests, but as I have no interest at all in putting up with QSW kitsch anymore I have turned it off and gone to the internet and find out what the given guest is promoting these days.
I should add that I think George is personally a very nice guy, but so was Jethro Bodine and I wouldn’t want to watch him host a pop culture show either. And let’s also be clear that George doesn’t represent Canadian youth culture. He represents QSW culture, and not necessarily the youth part either. The problem with this show is not just that it’s so regional in flavour, however, although that’s a big part of it. The other part of the problem is that it represents a subculture that is EXTREMELY overexposed in the Canadian media, including the CBC, and very many people outside of Toronto are sick to death of it, and probably many people in Toronto are as well. It’s also a subculture that is quite insular and significantly out of step with Canadian culture, and when it looks outside of itself at all it tends to look to New York City and not to Canadian culture. I could go on if you wish, but I hope my point is fairly clear. Again, ask yourself why anyone in Moncton or Moose Jaw would want to watch an extremely regional personality like George host a show with this regional style?
Love The Hour’s set.
Love watching The Hour.
I tell all my friends and family to check it out.
David:
I think you’ve grown up and forgotten that this show was created with the intention to attract a new demographic to CBC’s News/Current Affairs programming: youth.
Currently live within the Greater “Moncton, NB” area and trust me George does have an audience in this region – particularly among university students. Yeah, we might not watch every night – but I honestly couldn’t tell you a single program that I watch every night or week – but when I tune in, I’m looking for that alternative perspective to CBC’s traditional programs yet same quality. This medium is not overrepresented on Canadian television – you just need to learn that you are not the only demographic that must be served by CBC programing. BTW – just discovered Radio 3, it’s awesome.
David,
Your dislike of Toronto makes me afraid to ever go to Calgary. I always get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach hearing this kind of topic brought up. Where I work, I make a point of making sure that things don’t just say “Bloor and Yonge” I make sure the city is on as well, so that it’s not implied that Toronto is the centre of the universe.
Toronto is the media centre of Canada. (well English-speaking media I guess) People go there to be famous and to get work in the media. Most people who are in Toronto are not from there! If it were possible to be nationally well-known, and still live in Calgary, Moosejaw or Whitehorse, I’m sure CBC would have hired someone who fit that description, who STILL worked in those cities, by now. I’m sure if they could reduce the Torontocentricity of the CBC, they would.
It’s funny Tod, All you did was put up a nice picture of the set of the Hour and you get all these… grumpy complaints.
You got some nice comments too.
But let’s address the complainers.
I’m from Montreal, just moved to Toronto. I am encountering some prejudices because I am a Quebecer so this type of complaint I just read, really bothers me. We need to try to get along more mes amis, going the other way, is going backwards.
I have met online people from across the country who really like The Hour. They don’t have these regional prejudices… they just like what they like man.. It’s just a show. Don’t know why it bothers the grumpies so much.
If I hear one more ‘The Host is from Toronto so bla bla bla whine whine whine’ and that’s their only beef… I think they should take another look at who they are. The Host happens to be talented, the guests happen to be interesting and the show is well written, informative and entertaining. My opinion. That is why I watch and blog about it.
If they don’t watch the show why do they go on about it so much?
Teresa:
You should like it. You’re from Toronto so it ought to appeal to you. It was designed to appeal to you, as is most of CBC’s pop culture programming.
George S.- former MuchMusic VJ who has essentially never even lived anywhere other than Toronto in his life, but was still handed a daily national pop culture show on CBC TV produced out of Toronto
Gill Deacon – has lived in Toronto for a number of years and to the best of my knowledge was only a substitute host on a science show on the Discovery Channel, but was handed a daily daytime show on CBC television produced out of Toronto
Jian Ghomeshi – has never lived anywhere in Canada other than Toronto, and he has shown a truly offensive lack of knowledge and even lack of interest in Canada and Canadian pop culture outside of Toronto, to the point where he’s even made a number of derogatory remarks about various other places in Canada, but he also has Shelagh Rogers infatuated with him and he has been handed a daily pop culture show on Radio 1 hosted out of Toronto
Sook-Yin Lee – long time Toronto resident and former MuchMusic VJ who was made the host of the Saturday afternoon DNTO show out of Toronto
Brent Bambury – has lived in Toronto for a number of years now and he hosts the Saturday morning show GO out of Toronto
Laurie Brown – I haven’t found anything confirming it, but what do you want to bet that The Signal on Radio 2 is being hosted by Laurie Brown out of Toronto too?
And keep in mind that Toronto has only 15% of the population of Canada and that it has been at best the third most important region of Canada in terms of producing noteworthy Canadian pop culture for about a decade at least. Both Vancouver and Montreal have far surpassed Toronto in terms of producing noteworthy Canadian music in almost all genres, for example.
There is no mystery to what’s wrong with the CBC. The upper management has become so out of touch (and possibly corrupt?) that they have started hiring all their Toronto friends and neighbours to host and produce all of these shows from Toronto. The end result is virtually a full slate of cultural programming from Toronto, by Torontonians, and for Torontonians, but that is being paid for by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. While some of those doing the hiring may feel like they’ve accomplished something in the short term by having secured a job for a friend or neighbour, this is ultimately a self defeating strategy. When you start hiring clearly unqualified people the quality of the programming goes way down (see George, Jian, and Gill for starters), and when you produce a large majority of the shows from the same place then collectively they fail to represent Canadians and Canadian culture, and the result of both of these factors is that Canadians end up turning the CBC off and/or switching to other sources for their cultural information, and this is exactly the problem the CBC has been facing in recent years. And these are people the CBC may never get back. I am one of the former diehard CBC listeners in this group.
Ryan:
Last I heard the show was drawing only 100,000 viewers, well below what was expected. The fact is that not many people are watching it, and as I said above I don’t think that it is failing because of the guests they are bringing in. I think it is failing because people don’t want to watch this style of show or this host. It’s not culturally relevant to most Canadians, and perhaps worse it is fairly clearly yet another show directed at the Toronto market, and I think most Canadians have been overexposed to the QSW schtick and were sick of it years ago. I’m a huge fan of Gran Lawrence’s Radio 3 podcast, btw, and a big fan and of Canadian indie music. I’m also a left leaning, socially conscious, fairly recent university graduate, so I’m in the audience that this show should be shooting for, but for the reasons I’ve stated in this thread, all this show does for me is show me is how arrogant and out of touch the CBC has become. Grant Lawrence truly understands the Canadian indie music scene, for example, and yet while the CBC is filling up it’s lineup with all their Toronto friends and neighbours, Grant Lawrence has his Radio 2 show taken away from him. For those who don’t know, Lawrence is based out of Vancouver.