Blame CBC, not Shad, for Q shakeup
After Ghomeshi, next host had unenviable task
There have been bigger shoes to fill, but I don’t know that anyone has stepped into a more awkward pair than Shadrach Kabango. Coming in as Jian Ghomeshi’s permanent replacement on Q — or q, as it was rebranded, in a move that seemed to unconsciously suggest diminished expectations — couldn’t even be called the stuff of a novel: a story that messy risks losing the plot entirely.
The CBC confirmed Monday that after just 16 months, Shad is leaving q. His final show airs today.
Not to dwell too long on circumstances outside Shad’s control, but the man he replaced would be a key piece of q’s narrative even if the new host was stepping away after 20 years on the job. Not only did Shad have to help snuff out the 13-storey bonfire that had become Ghomeshi’s reputation and legacy at the CBC, he had to actually help run what had become far and away its most popular radio property. Q had become a show that set the arts-related agenda for a wide swath of CBC listeners, who in turn make up a healthy subset of all arts-consuming people in the country. Q, capital Q, was probably as close as we’ve come to a national conversation about pop culture in the country during the Internet era.
I never much cottoned to that version of Q. Even while in the dark about his hideous off-mic behaviour, I found Ghomeshi smarmy and selfsatisfied, the impresario of a show that seemed vastly more about performing your “love of the arts” than actually pulling it apart and sorting through its beauty, contradiction and chaos. But I was a decided minority. It was a flagship, and Shad was given its helm.
With the benefit of hindsight, Shad now looks a bit like a funhouse mirror version of the cult of personality that the Ghomeshi revelations were supposed to help stamp out at the CBC. Obviously not because Shad’s personality is anything like the perverse tyranny that characterized Ghomeshi’s. By all accounts, Shad might be the nicest man in show business: a decent human, unfailingly pleasant co-worker and someone who was willing to listen to suggestions and ideas (there were apparently a fair number) from his bosses, peers and underlings.
But he was plainly someone who was hired not for his skill as an interviewer or host, but for his natural charisma, in the hopes that it could be shoehorned into a radio presenter mould. He was a sort of ideal spokesperson for the rebrand — a talented and diverse artist to take you on a tour of Canada’s talented and diverse cultural scene! — who was only fitfully good at actually making the rebrand work.
You could actually see this dynamic play out in the two different versions of his interviews that were released to the world.
Though he improved over time, Shad was rarely capable of making his radio interviews feel like conversations. He had the slow feet of someone waiting to ask his next question, not necessarily listening and responding, let alone having something to add. (Ghomeshi always had his favourite subject, himself, at hand, which at least gave him a better flow.) It’s the kind of dry choppiness that can actually work reasonably well in the rapidfire, thin-gruel junket world, when you’re one of dozens of interrogators on the day, but in q’s more rarefied, longish format, 20 Questions very quickly turns into hot vapour at best or a grating annoyance at worst.
Though the words were the same, Shad’s interviews often appear more engaging in video format — you can see that he is lively and engaged and invested in setting his subject at ease. He still often lacks the nimbleness to slip past the media guard and reveal something deeper, but they flow better, or at least hold your attention more. Where Shad’s presence as a host never really kicks into gear, his stage presence, honed over years, keeps up with his subjects.
With Shad’s plug now pulled, though, the failings of his tenure seem more the fault of the network than the host. The shuffling in of Tom Power, a skilled radio technician who has done a sharp job whenever called upon in relief, reads like an admission of that, too. You may not be able to teach charisma, but you can’t seem to teach being a skilled and thoughtful interviewer, either. And in a pinch, it seems like charisma will emerge from a job well done much more readily than it does the other way around.
Of course, Power will also benefit from the time and distance from capital Q, stepping into a space now where the show can be built, rather than just have to react to what came before. That the CBC didn’t push further in the first place — like, say, I don’t know, by picking a name that didn’t look like a diminutive — also feels like a valuable lesson for them, though like most people they tend to take their lessons slowly and only when there’s no other option.
As for Shad, it is maybe a shame that his time on the show doesn’t offer much more of a legacy than lessons in what not to do. Looking back, it is hard to see how anyone could have walked gracefully in the shoes he was asked to wear. Running was never really an option.
Q WAS PROBABLY AS CLOSE AS WE’VE COME TO A NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT POP CULTURE IN THE COUNTRY DURING THE INTERNET ERA. — COLUMNIST DAVID BERRY