For some time now, the chairman of the CRTC has had a special place in the collective heart of the Playback newsroom. No disrespect to his esteemed predecessors, but since his debut in early 2007 the deliciously blunt, delightfully unpredictable former judge has made it so much easier for us to find the zazz, the snap, the color, the call-it-what-you-will in stories about the often and otherwise grey goings-on in Gatineau.

And, mind you, that was before 2009, when the background hum of regulatory bickering that can usually be heard across the industry erupted into a full-throated 10-way shouting match between the cable barons, the ISPs, Egyptian cell phone executives, copyleft activists, broadcasters and, amazingly, the plain ol’ public.

All this while the broadcasting business on the whole continues to lurch pell-mell into an uncertain future.

The arguments on the various issues so far have been myriad and forceful, and are sure to be more so when the latest hearings on fee-for-carriage get underway shortly. And lucky, lucky Konrad von Finckenstein is the man who gets to sort it all out.

For all these reasons, and others which we will expand upon in our Dec. 14 print edition, von Finckenstein is Playback‘s Person of the Year.