***

2006 wasn’t a very good year for George Stroumboulopoulos. Sure, his show “The Hour” won two Gemini awards, and it moved from ratings deprived CBC Newsworld to the main network, slotting in right after “The National with Peter Mansbridge” at 11pm. But 2006 also featured his high-profile disaster hosting the joint CBC-ABC reality television production “The One”, which was quickly yanked from the air by ABC after its debut earned the lowest ratings for a new series in television history despite receiving the most promotional support – read: money – of any ABC summer debut in its history. Worse still was the fact that “The One” temporarily bumped “The National” from its 10 PM EST time slot, which irritated CBC loyalists and drew the ire of cultural nationalists like Friends of Canadian Broadcasting’s Ian Morrison, who described the move as a “fiasco”. The CBC then, perhaps unwisely, decided to move Stroumboulopoulos right next door to the scene of the (aborted) crime, so to speak, extending his show to one hour and putting it on the main network at 11 PM, right after “The National”. Thus far, the results are decidedly mixed.

George Stroumboulopoulos is something of a golden boy in Canadian popular culture, having enjoyed a string of professional successes beginning in radio at the Fan 590 and 102.1 The Edge, and then in television as a popular VJ at Much Music. His profile rose beyond the ranks of couch surfing twenty-somethings and boy-band addled teenage girls when he shilled successfully for Tommy Douglas in CBC’s surprisingly successful “Greatest Canadian” reality television series. The CBC rewarded him with his own show on CBC Newsworld, “The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos”, in 2004. With all this success it isn’t terribly surprising that certain people have been enjoying his recent failures just a little too much.

Take Barrett Hooper’s article “Stroumbo’s Gotta Go”, published in the November 2nd, 2006 edition of NOW Magazine. In it, after attacking the way Stroumboulopoulos dresses – and really, has wearing black ever been a bad fashion choice? – Hooper gets to the core of his argument in accusing Stroumboulopoulos of being an agent of style rather than substance. Hooper argues that Stroumboulopoulos lacks “the stones” to ask the tough questions “of guests with something other than a record or movie to sell.” He cites as evidence the fact that “the best he can do against polished politico Michael Ignatieff is a smart-alecky ‘did you steal Bob Rae’s Kraft dinner in college?” He notes that Stroumboulopoulos let Charles McVety, the head of the Canadian Christian College and the spokesperson for the Institute for Canadian Values, “speak against gay marriage almost uncontested.”

Neither of these interviews unfolded the way Hooper depicts them. I watched both the McVety and Ignatieff interviews, and they were both more serious and occasionally contentious than anything Jon Stewart, the man to which Stroumboulopoulos is most often compared of late, has ever produced on his show. In both cases, Stroumboulopoulos appeared to be better prepared and more informed on the subjects at hand than his guests, and he didn’t allow either of them to spin him for a second. McVety attempted to assert that marriage counselors were being “fired across the country” for refusing to perform gay marriages, a fallacy that Stroumboulopoulos immediately contested by inviting McVety to return on his show once a single marriage counselor had actually been fired. Stroumboulopoulos achieved an admirably rare feat in that same interview, exposing the weaknesses of McVety’s arguments without embarrassing him personally, a trick that Stephen Colbert could stand to learn. With respect to the Ignatieff interview, the Kraft dinner question that Hooper pillories was a throw-away question near the end of the set, and one that led into yet another round of tough questions for the good professor. As Macleans pundit Paul Wells wrote on his blog Inkless Wells, “George Stroumboulopoulos was a champion tonight interviewing Michael Ignatieff. Diligent, well prepped, attentive, and taking no guff from the subject. A lot of journalists without nose rings could profit from close attention to George.”

The blame for most, if not all, of Stroumboulopoulos’s recent struggles belongs to his bosses at the CBC. Stroumboulopoulos’s 2006 looks positively rosy in comparison to that of CEO Robert Rabinovitch and Executive Vice President Richard Stursberg, who in addition to enduring the embarrassment of “The One” have watched the CBC lose bidding rights for the 2010 Winter Olympics, attempt to intimidate The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle after he wrote a critical review of “The One”, come under attack from the new Conservative government and Heritage Minister Bev Oda, and publicly consider the possibility of Hockey Night in Canada and its considerable advertising revenues moving to CTV/TSN. It seems likely that we can add Stroumboulopoulos’s role in “The One” to that list of failures, with Rabinovitch and Stursberg encouraging him to participate as a means of expanding his increasingly valuable credibility with younger viewers. That they have significantly undermined his ability to exploit that credibility by putting his show up against the wildly popular “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Colbert Report” is, if not self-evidently counterproductive, at least in character with recent decisions made by the CBC brass. Putting Stroumboulopoulos and his team of two or three writers up against Stewart and Colbert’s combined staff of approximately forty is truly an unfair comparison, and yet the CBC insists on making it, and exposing the reputation of one of their most marketable commodities in the process.

In spite of all of this, I think George Stroumboulopoulos will be fine. I’ve been on his show a couple of times, and both times I’ve come away impressed with the range of his curiosity and the depth of his intelligence. He isn’t, as Barrett Hooper appears to think, some schmuck with a nose ring and a slacker’s disposition. He is, instead, one of Canada’s most talented interviewers and someone who delivers the news in a way that actually engages younger Canadians. Let’s just hope that the CBC’s executives find the good sense to stay out of his way.

Toronto, January 23rd, 2007 – 1,013 w.

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