Can't say I was wowed by the inaugural episode of CBC Newsworld's The Hour, with ex-MuchMusic veejay George Stroumboulopoulos.

For openers, I find it amusing that he used the word "bullshit" in describing what wouldn't be on his show, but when you go to its website, it says: ... the truth is that CBC Newsworld wanted his “no-BS” attitude. (Hey – it’s the CBC: We can’t swear on a web page!)

(FWIW, here's an earlier posting on this show)

Welcome to the conflicted world of the CBC -- wanting to be hip, defiant and edgy on the one hand, yet prim, proper and oh-so-conscious of its many, many rules on the other. :)

For something that was touted as an unconventional hour of current affairs, what struck me was the absence of that quality.

There was one attempt at satire over Prince Harry's choice of Nazi regalia for a party costume, but it wasn't funny. There may have been other, even weaker ones that flew over my head, for all I know.

A "deeply personal" look at the tsunami disaster in India was, to me, another boiler-plate CBC TV feature that could have been on any of its shows.

It was preceded by a chat with Peter Mansbridge (ya just don't see enough of that guy on CBC).

There were also some technical glitches. They lost the sound from Stromb's mic for a good 20 seconds so you could barely hear him, and he once looked at a camera for about four to five seconds without saying anything (an eternity in live TV).

After 10 minutes, I was thinking, "there's another 50 minutes of this?"

For me, interviews with with Bob Geldof and Eric Lindros really didn't go anywhere.

If the show asked my advice, it would be to raise the energy level and edit the video features in a way that expresses the supposed style of the show better.

I also wonder why it doesn't have a live audience (although after seeing some of the bits, that may be a good thing -- for both sides).

Since Newsworld gassed CounterSpin, why not have a couple nights per week (The Hour runs Monday-Thursday) where there is 20 minutes or whatever set aside for a robust panel debate? Ban Allan Gregg. Get some fresh faces on there.

My sense is the show will get better (I liked Stromb's persona on MuchMusic and I'm sure he'll do fine in this gig). For one thing, Stromb's hiring was announced Dec. 10 and the show went to air on Jan. 17. That's not a lot of time to get ready for a daily one-hour show. It will take time to work out the bugs. As more evidence of how rushed things might have been, the website sez: Ok. So before you jump down our throats about our lack of a web page, you gotta realize that we don't even have a show yet – but we will.

Uh, guys: The show's started already.

To me, at this moment -- and it's almost cruel to say this -- it's looking a lot like a hipster newscast as envisioned by middle-aged CBC execs.

Addendum:

There's a few comments at the This Magazine blog

Over at the Hollywood North Report, Sarah Marchildon (see the comment below) had this pithy summary:

Because I’m such a Strombo fan, I don’t want to write off his new show entirely. I’m going to chalk it up to growing pains. Sometimes it just takes a while for a new show to work out the kinks and get into a groove. But I’m not entirely convinced the CBC is the right home for Strombo.

If Strombo is the cool kid, CBC is the quiet, boring kid. There’s a place for both of them in the world, but maybe just not together.

Actually, as I got up this (Thursday, Jan. 19) morning, I heard a ringing endorsement:

"I saw it last night. It's good! It's good! He's a natural!"

The person speaking was Paul Grant, fill-in host for Sheelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada. Actually, he was speaking to Jian Ghomeshi -- who I suspect is destined to be a regular on the Strombopoulhour.

The Torontoist has also weighed in on this, noting, correctly, that no MSM outlet has reviewed it (Toronto Star, where art thou?). It pointed to a link from 1051 am Toronto.

On Friday, Rick Salutin wrote the following in the Globe and Mail (reposted on rabble.ca):

For the new year, CBC Newsworld has a new nightly show called The Hour, which I keep thinking of as The New. Its host is ex-MuchMusic VJ George Stroumboulopoulos, on a funky set, with spiky hair and ear and nose rings, which are irrelevant, as he always tells interviewers, who always ask. He is the latest answer to the CBC quest for the new and the young, which is ancient. I've seen little new in it: a phone call with a guy stuck on the tarmac at Pearson who everyone else called, the hockey talks, a swipe at North Korea that had the faux gutsiness of CBC's Rex Murphy taking on Osama bin Laden.

A quality of Ralph Benmergui hovers over the show: a sense of trying too hard, yearning for success and approval, which doesn't quite go with alternate or edgy. Like what? “I can't believe he asked if those guys had chlamydia,” chortled George about one of his regular reporters, as if underlining the guy's off-the-wallness for us. (The real Ralph Benmergui has renewed himself as the morning DJ on the FM jazz station and good luck to him.) There was even a touch of Pierre Berton, rest his soul, when George said, “I go around this world and tell people Canadians are not boring.”

I hope for Stromb's fate the Benmergui comparison is shown to be wrong -- and I think it will be. Benmergui and Peter Gzowski before him showed the CBC has no concept of what makes a late-night show work (co-workers of mine back in the day used to gain great glee from the bi-weekly Benmergui Death Watch feature in Frank Magazine :) ).

I'll check back with The Hour in mid-February to see how it's evolving.

Addendum to the addendum:

Regular blog visitors will know this, but if you're new here, I'm a writer for CTV News Online in my day job. However, any opinions I expressed on Stromb, The Hour or any other topic in this blog are solely my opinion. I don't speak for my employer, and it doesn't speak for me.