That was part of a lineup announcement that included an interesting-obit show hosted by Gordon Pinsent, as well as a multiculturalism identity show hosted by CBC Montreal's Geeta Nadkarni (CBC's article calls her "Geeta Nadkami").

The news about Vogels's new show comes coincidentally at the same time we hear that Torontonian sex superstar Sue Johanson will be hanging up the dildo and retiring from full-time sex advising and ending her show's run on the Oxygen network.

Roberts revisited

Speaking of Vogels, her replacement at Hour, Laura Roberts, asked me to critique her column. I admit that I've stopped reading Hour and Mirror regularly because they don't have RSS feeds and have a very small news-to-advertising ratio.

So I perused through the archives, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It's a bit wordy, a bit opinionative (in the sense of spouting opinions without much analysis or research to back them up), and a bit too focused on the author's personal life. These are all fairly common for new columnists still trying to figure out what works, and even then it may appeal to others more than it does to me.

In the end, even though it's been six months already, it's still a bit too early to tell if the column works or not. It's definitely not Josey, nor should it be.

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Vogels's final column (which took me about a half hour to find, thank you very much Hour's horrible navigation system) points out that it's been 13 years and 500 columns. Her career as a (professional) sex and relationships journalist began at Hour in 1994, after she was a Concordia student and Link editor.

To say that Vogels stopped her column (as is sort of implied) wouldn't be exactly accurate. Vogels has lived in Toronto for many years now and her column is syndicated in newspapers across the country. My Messy Bedroom lives on in other "alternative" newspapers and on her website, while her tamer relationships-but-no-icky-sex column Dating Girl appears in many mainstream newspapers including The Gazette.

I can only theorize at the reason behind the change. I hope it was more a matter of wanting editorial renewal with a younger, fresher and more local face than it was about wanting to cut costs by slashing an expensive syndicated column.

Either way, she's being replaced by Laura Roberts, Editor-in-Chief of local smut zine Black Heart Magazine and herself a former Link editor. How Roberts will do with the space is anyone's guess. Her debut column focuses on herself, and how she'll report on her boyfriends (an issue I have wondered about quite a bit myself thoughout the entire run of Sex and the City), and The Link has a brief interview with her.

One thing's for sure: Roberts is now about as old as Vogels was when she started her column. And the replacement will mean a huge loss in experience, which hopefully will be mitigated by a big increase in enthusiasm.

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