--- In georgestroumboulopoulosrox@yahoogroups.com, adessa69
<no_reply@y...> wrote:
>
Hey thanks for the, I have not really seen or hear much about George
since he left much. I am trying to find the Hour on tv? do you have
to have a specailty channel for that show?

> Here's an article on George that appeared in last Saturday's Globe
> and Mail:
>
> THE HAMPSON INTERVIEW: GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS
>
> This Hour has a nose ring
>
> But don't call him the 'youth fix' for the CBC, he says. Nor
> an 'alternative' broadcaster. 'I'm not going on TV with a 9-foot
> Mohawk and a pierced scrotum'
>
> By SARAH HAMPSON
> Saturday, March 12, 2005 Page R3
>
> 'Things don't have to be black and white. Things don't have to be
> perfect.
> "Life is sloppy. Life is awkward. Life can be drums and guitars and
> bass and vocals. Life can be female vocalists and it can be male
> vocalists. Life can be all of these things. So can news."
> Such is the aesthetic driving CBC News: The Hour, an hour-long show
> hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos, launched in January on CBC
> Newsworld, at 8 p.m. ET, Monday to Thursday.
> The riff of explanation, delivered in one long breath at the end of
> an interview, comes from Stroumboulopoulos, 32, the latest youth
fix
> for the network.
> He doesn't like that suggestion, though. "I don't even think about
> it. I don't care. The smart thing for them [CBC executives] to know
> is that I'm not the youth fix."
> Okay, but they're the ones who put out a press release to launch
the
> show, saying that it promised "to cut through the crap." Someone is
> trying really hard to be hip when official language is street
> vernacular.
> Plus, there's the cautionary tale of Jian Ghomeshi, the former host
> of Play and the last great hipster hope for the network, who's now
> show-less, and a regular contributor on The Hour. "Well, I don't
> think shows are supposed to be forever," Stroumboulopoulos says of
> Ghomeshi's meteoric rise and fall. "[But] I think newscasts can
> [be]," he quickly adds.
> His show is clearly an experiment. Mostly, it's George and his big,
> brown teddy-bear eyes and wildly gesticulating arms taking us
> through a composition of newsy bits, from politics to sports to
> entertainment and a few wild-card interviews thrown in for good
> measure. In February, on one of several shows I watched, for
> example, there was a video interview with an obscure scientist who
> had developed some theory about wormholes that would allow us to go
> from our own "soap bubble" of a universe to another. While he was
> talking, the camera cut to Stroumboulopoulos holding his head in
his
> hands and every so often, mugging for the camera with dumbfounded
> expressions. "Well, it's a kinda human story," he says now to
> explain why he included it. "And the philosophical end of that
> story, which I hope people would take from it, is hey, we're all
> lonely, we're all happy, we're all sad, we're all hurting, we're
all
> everything. Wouldn't it be great to disappear [to another
universe]?
> Hey, there's a guy who says we can!"
> That's news? The program is not about what happens so much as what
> Stroumboulopoulos finds interesting and how he reacts to it. The
> Hour is The World According to George. In that way, he's like our
> version of CNN's news guide, Anderson Cooper, only with a nose
ring,
> two earrings, spiky, messed-up hair, and dressed in his uniform of
a
> T-shirt, jeans and white sneakers rather than a suit.
> (Not that the former MuchMusic VJ thinks of himself as
> an "alternative" broadcaster. "I'm not going on TV with a 9-foot
> Mohawk and a pierced scrotum," Stroumboulopoulos says in the
> straightforward manner that's become his trademark.) These new kind
> of current-events shows use compelling personalities like search
> engines on the Internet. The world is so small, with blips of every
> event in every corner of the planet monitored on news radars, that
> consumers of information need someone to tell them what's
important,
> cool and worthy of their splintered attention.
> It helps if we like the guide with whom we're hitching a ride
> through the universe, and Stoumboulopoulos is completely lovable.
> (His long-time girlfriend, by the way, is Jasmine Tuffaha, a 27-
year-
> old television producer for the main CBC network.) His eyes are
> great pools of feeling, and he reaches out to touch me so often
that
> I decide to leave my arms folded on the table between us, just to
> make it easier for him.
> "You never see a non-fiction representation of who you are," he
says
> to explain his show. "You see reality shows, which are directed by
> producers who tell the [cast members] what to do. You see the
> [regular] news, which is very sobering, a sort of here's what
> happened today. You need all that. . . . But The Hour needed to be
> everything that I am, everything that everybody is. It needed to be
> serious, it needed to be comic." He sees his show as a "sidebar"
> and "an adjunct" to the traditional news programs. "Our show only
> works because it's beside The National [at 9 p.m. ET on Newsworld,
> 10 p.m. on the main network.] As a stand-alone, there's no point in
> having a show like ours. You need the machine of the network behind
> you." Peter Mansbridge, The National's staid anchorman, whom
> Stroumboulopoulos contacted for advice on life inside the Corp once
> he'd made the leap to CBC Newsworld, has called him "one of the
> bright interpreters of the current generation."
> The show is not marketed as a companion piece to The National and,
> as Stroumboulopoulos himself says, "Nobody's loyal to a channel."
> (Part of his charm is that in the throes of his passion about some
> topic or other, he often contradicts himself.) Of its performance,
> the broadcaster will only say that The Hour's audience numbers
> are "on target." When asked how long he has been given to make the
> show a success, Stroumboulopoulos says CBC Newsworld "gave us a
> couple of seasons at it."
> CBC has been trying to lure Stroumboulopoulos to the network for a
> number of years. It first approached him in 2000, his rookie year
on
> TV, after he came to CITY-TV from radio, Toronto's 102.1 The Edge
> via The Fan 590 AM.
> Their offer of an " arts-based, entertainment-based show" and
> other "anchor-driven things" didn't suit him, he says. "My strength
> as a broadcaster is to be very natural. Put me in a construct, I
> will look like a caged animal." He was happy at MuchMusic, where he
> was host of The Punk Show, The New Music, LOUD and MuchNews. He was
> bagging live interviews with U2's Bono at a Liberal leadership
> convention and travelling to Zambia to co-host a documentary for
> World AIDS Day.
> CBC came knocking on his door again in the summer last year. "They
> said, 'We have a show.' I said, 'What's the show?' They said, 'What
> do you want it to be?' "
> Stroumboulopoulos has had a steady rise through the Canadian media.
> The elder of two children, he was born in Toronto and grew up in
the
> suburban Malton and Rexdale neighbourhoods. His father, who is a
> Greek from Egypt, left the family when his only son was 7. They
have
> spoken only once or twice in 25 years, but, as Stroumboulopoulos
> says, "I'm not having to write a concept album because I have a
> problem with Daddy."
> He was raised by his Ukrainian mother, who rented out rooms in her
> house and took an early-morning paper route and an afternoon job as
> a waitress to make ends meet. In later years, she graduated from
> nursing school. At 14, Stroumboulopoulos found jobs after school
and
> on weekends, working at Mr. Sub, as an usher in a movie house and
at
> the airport, driving forklift trucks. He helped put himself through
> Humber College's two-year radio broadcasting program.
> Stroumboulopoulos is uninhibited, like a grown-up child who wants
to
> stick his fingers into everything that captures his fancy. When he
> was younger, his family tried to shorten their surname to
> Stroumbouls. He would have none of it. Early on, he hired a manager
> in Los Angeles, Michael Sugar of Relativity Management,
> because, "You need representation to have a career," he says. There
> have been offers from the United States, which, so far, he's turned
> down.
> He owns a house near Queen and Bathurst -- "It's a son-of-an-
> immigrant thing," he says. "You want to own land." He also owns a
> BMW motorcycle, his fifth, since he began riding at 18, and an 11-
> year-old secondhand BMW car. (As anyone who has been watching the
> show knows, he's in the market for a hybrid car.) In his spare
time,
> he and some friends are making a documentary about Jesus, which
they
> hope to sell to networks around the world. He keeps his hand in
> radio, as host of Budweiser Radio, a Canada-wide syndicated show
> about new music, sponsored by the beer company.
> "I want to have a catalogue of things to be proud of, so I can say
I
> did my part," he says. Would he compromise in his views of what he
> wants to do? "If I was asked to do something I was uncomfortable
> with, I would leave. I am not a lifer anywhere."