Covering a Justin Bieber concert sounded like a dream assignment when it was first offered.

But Wednesday night, when the Canadian heartthrob performed at Massey Hall in Toronto in front of thousands of frenzied, screeching girls, not so much.

The Biebs arrived on stage an hour late than scheduled for the live taping of his half-hour Christmas special, Justin Bieber: Home For The Holidays, for MuchMusic and CTV.

The global pop sensation and his merry entourage had been running behind schedule all day, apparently, having just come off the ice at Air Canada Centre where Bieber had been slapping a hockey puck around with Dion Phaneuf, Jake Gardiner, Jonas Gustavsson and Tyler Bozak and the rest of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Fellow Canadian star crooner Michael Buble had done the very same thing in his hometown of Vancouver with the Canucks for his Christmas TV special.

So it made sense for the CTV producers to include every Canadian boy’s dream assignment into Bieber’s Big TV Adventure for MuchMusic and CTV.

The TV cameras also rolled when Bieber earlier that day visited the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto to make a food donation.

But all the while, back at ground zero, Bieber’s make-believe girlfriends had been whipping themselves up into a frenzy waiting for their idealized boyfriend to arrive on stage.

They spent much of the time fussing with their hair to take endless glamour shots on their smartphones with the Massey Hall stage in the background to tweet to jealous friends.

Made you think of children’s beauty pageants.

Then, mercilessly, at 8 p.m. Wednesday night, the lights did go down and the decibel level in Massey Hall instantly soared to a deafening EEEEEE!!!!! as Bieber finally strode on stage in a red lumberjack shirt and a toque on his head.

The thing is, one young girl shrieking at the top of her lungs is generally cause for alarm and action.

But the shrill of a few thousand hysterical girls screeching in unison apparently brings some sort of tribal comfort to Beliebers.

It’s a concentrated, high-pitched, sharp sound, something akin to sand-blasting or a snowmobile at three feet.

That was especially so when Bieber clowned and mugged for his frothing fans between songs.

“So what do you want for Christmas?” he asked the audience at one point, only to be met with frenzied shouts of “You! You! You!”

“Well, all I want is you,” he responded in his trademark soft voice.

Flattery like that only unleashed a sonic backdrop of screaming and chanting that drowned out any chance of hearing the next few songs.

Where was Howard Beale when you could really have used the mad-prophet of the airwaves to get you in one piece to the exits.

No doubt it was much the same for the adoring hordes of fans of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

But it has been the good fortune of CTV to have pop’s biggest attraction currently hail from just down the road and be willing to do a charity fund-raising concert for Canadians just before he sits down to a Christmas dinner with his family. (All ticket-sale proceeds from the holiday concert event were also being donated Bieber’s “Believe” charity.)

The steadi-cam and jib arm operators kept their cameras rolling during the live taping as Bieber sang to his lovesick fans such memorable lyrics as “You’re the only one,” “You’re my favorite girl,” “I’ll never let you go,” and “I just want to be with you.”

Of course, how much of the collective girlie hysteria from Wednesday night at Massey Hall will make it into CTV’s half-hour special – after you factor in eight minutes of commercials, the food bank and Air Canada Centre visits – will be left to the network’s editors and producers working up to a Thursday night deadline.

But long after the Massey Hall stage lights dimmed, and the ecstasies and agonies of Bieber’s fans was eased, CTV and MuchMusic will be able to say their cameras rolled at the beginning of a likely long and illustrious career for a Canadian musical phenom.

Only next time Bieber is back to perform in his hometown, they should send a wide-eyed intern to cover the event.