Holiday: Sounds of the Season 2010

All the artists from the live broadcast of CBC Radio One Toronto's "Metro Morning" Sounds of the Season broadcast were on-stage for the finale on 3-December-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Once a year, CBC Toronto holds an entire day of live and studio audience tapings of its programming at the national headquarters building in Toronto, Ontario. For the second straight year, I chose to get up early to be down in the Glenn Gould Studio in time to watch the taping of "Metro Morning," the morning drive-time show on CBC Radio One which airs from 5:30 to 8:30.


Host Matt Galloway took a moment before the show opened to send a picture of the audience to Twitter on 3-December-2010

While he had done plenty of live "Sounds of the Season" broadcasts as host of Here and Now, this was host Matt Galloway's first year doing the "Metro Morning" live broadcast. Galloway can hardly be accused of not being technologically adept--as we awaited the beginning of the show, he took a picture of the audience with his phone and posted it to the Internet via Twitter. As luck would have it, I happened to sit just a row away from Galloway's parents who had come to see their son at work!


Denzal Sinclaire performed the "Little Drummer Boy" during the Metro Morning Sounds of the Season live broadcast on 3-December-2010

The real draw of live broadcast is the musical artists that perform. This year, the Metro Morning broadcast featured the Toronto Mass Choir, Pavlo, and Daniela Nardi. Probably the most unusual performance was Elizabeth Shepherd and her Swedish husband Johan Hultqvist (of Mr. Something Something) who did a duet of a Swedish traditional holiday song. However, two performances really blew me away--Denzal Sinclaire, dressed
in jeans, singing the "Little Drummer Boy" with a great jazz sensibility, and Shakura S'Aida doing a wonderful rendition of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch."


Shakura S'Aida performed the "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" impressing the audience in Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, Ontario on 3-December-2010

For radio fans like myself, the other big draw of "Sounds of the Season" is the chance to actually see all the radio personalities who are normally just voices. As a past attendee, such broadcasters as traffic reporter Jim Curran, news reporter Jill Dempsey and business commentator Michael Hlinka were familiar faces, but medical columnist Peter Lin was a new face to me and it was equally fun to watch him tease Matt Galloway as it is to hear it on the air.


Dr. Peter Lin shared a lighter moment with host Matt Galloway during the live broadcast of "Metro Morning" on 3-December-2010

At one point, I pulled out my walkman to discover that the there was absolutely no delay in the broadcast--exactly what was happening in front of our eyes was going straight out to 99.1 FM without any buffering. In an age of digital broadcasting, that was remarkably refreshing.


Daily Bread Food Bank Executive Director Gail Nyberg spoke with Matt Galloway about fund-raising totals during the "Sounds of the Season" broadcast on 3-December-2010

Of course, the whole point of the broadcast was to raise money for area food banks including the Daily Bread Food Bank. It doesn't take a special day for that--donations are accepted anytime.

More coverage of the Sounds of the Season Metro Morning broadcast will be forthcoming in an update to my photo site

Margin Notes: Frozen, Toyota, Comedy, Hitchcock

In a scene symbolic of the season so far, a TTC Subway crossed the frozen Humber River in Toronto, Ontario while the land was free of snow on 8-February-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It's been a somewhat strange winter season in Toronto. While Washington, DC and other unlikely environs have been pummeled with snow, Torontonians have spent much of 2010 with either no snow on the ground or just a modest dusting. With the exception of one quite warm week, though, temperatures have been seasonal, below 0. Will it last? We're very cognizant that winter is far from over.

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Equally strange from the perspective of previous years is the quality perception being faced by Toyota as a result of accelerator and braking issues widely covered in the media. I'm surprised that only comedian and Renaissance man Harry Shearer seems to have beaten me to pointing out that Toyota's slogan from the 1980's seems to have taken on a new meaning--"Oh, What a Feeling!"

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Comedian Conan O'Brien performed his last show for NBC recently as Jay Leno will return to the Tonight Show after the Olympics, as widely covered in the mainstream media. One suggestion I've heard--that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation should try to recruit O'Brien--seems to have merit. Sure, O'Brien is not Canadian (he was born in Massachusetts, where I'm not sure they even know that Canada exists), but his comedy tends to appeal to the kind of thinking-world audience that watches the CBC. A 10-to-midnight lineup of "The National," a shortened "The Hour" (sure, they'd have to rename it) and then a stand-up comedy show hosted by O'Brien would be quite cohesive and worth watching, in my opinion.

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On the radio side, the CBC had a big decision to make locally after Andy Barrie announced last Monday that he would be stepping down as host of "Metro Morning" after fifteen years. Before I even had a chance to lobby for him here, Matt Galloway was announced as the new host earlier today. Now, the question is who takes over Galloway's post on "Here and Now"--my preference of course is Karen Horsman, who probably doesn't even want it. Perhaps Robin Brown, who has been available since the cancellation of "The Inside Track"? I suppose as long as they don't hire a psycho, it'll be fine.

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The movie "Psycho" was the subject of a segment on a recent episode of To The Best of Our Knowledge. David Thomson pointed out something I had never realized before--in the famous shower scene, we never actually see a knife penetrate skin. Think about that artistry of director Alfred Hitchcock--would any modern moviemaker do that?