Front Page Challenge
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2008) |
Front Page Challenge | |
---|---|
Created by | John Aylesworth |
Starring |
|
Country of origin | Canada |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Running time | 30 min. |
Original release | |
Network | CBC |
Release | 24 June 1957 1 February 1995 | –
Front Page Challenge was a Canadian
Synopsis
The series featured notable journalists attempting to guess the recent or old news story with which a hidden guest challenger was linked by asking him or her questions, in much the same manner as the American quiz shows, What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. Each round of the game started with news footage that introduced the news story in question to the studio audience and home viewers out of earshot of the panellists. After the guest was identified and/or the news story determined, the journalists then interviewed the guest about the story or about achievements or experiences for which he or she was known. Unlike American quiz shows that steered clear of controversy in the 1950s and 1960s, Front Page Challenge seems to have been affected by just one censorship practice, that of avoiding four-letter words.[1]
Guests came from all walks of life, including politicians like Pierre Trudeau and Indira Gandhi, activists like Malcolm X, sports figures like Gordie Howe, entertainers like Boris Karloff and Ed Sullivan, and writers like Upton Sinclair. From 1957 to 1979, the show featured many non-Canadians whose trips to Canada were paid by the CBC. (Gandhi was even flown from India to Toronto in the 1960s at the CBC's expense.)[citation needed] Occasionally, guests were featured for their involvement in stories that had nothing to do with their celebrity status. For example, in 1958 Karloff was featured because he had served as a rescue worker in the aftermath of a devastating 1912 tornado in Regina, Saskatchewan, where he had been appearing in a play many years before horror films made him famous.[citation needed]
Occasionally, the challenger on Front Page Challenge was one of the panellists themselves, unbeknownst to the other three panellists. After the game, the relevant person simply moved to the guest seat for the interview.
The show ran for nearly 40 years and featured a remarkably stable cast of panellists, including journalist-historian Pierre Berton, Betty Kennedy (who later become a Canadian senator), Toby Robins (who later became a movie actress) and radio commentator Gordon Sinclair. Columnist Allan Fotheringham joined the panel after Sinclair's death. A guest panellist, usually another Canadian journalist, politician or other celebrity, was also part of each episode. In 1990, journalist and radio/TV personality Jack Webster joined the show as its permanent fourth panellist.[4]
For its initial summer 1957 run, the show was hosted by Win Barron, best known for his voice-over narration of newsreels produced by the Canadian division of Paramount Pictures. However, Barron proved ill at ease in the moderator's seat, so both Fred Davis and panellist Alex Barris rotated as guest hosts in the early part of the fall before Davis was chosen to take over as host full-time (a position he retained for the rest of the show's run), though Barris continued to appear as a guest panellist occasionally and was the show's writer for the duration of its run. In 1981, the CBC published an oversized book written by Barris about the history of the program. It was titled Front Page Challenge: The 25th Anniversary.[5] Four years after the show's cancellation, another book by Barris was published chronicling the last fifteen years of the show. It included more details and anecdotes about the show's earlier phases not found in his first book.[6]
Several weeks after its debut, Ottawa Citizen television columnist Bob Blackburn deemed the programme to be noticeably improved and predicted that if that trend continued "and if the program doesn't run dry on its slightly limited subject matter, Front Page Challenge might well become an institution on Canadian TV".[7]
In his book, Barris says that at the height of the show's popularity in the late 1950s, the individual panellists became major celebrities in Canada. He relates how Toby Robins, a beautiful brunette, donned a blonde wig for a few episodes as an experiment, attracting hate mail including a death threat over the change of appearance. The books also include journalist Barbara Frum's remarks about how influential Robins was for 1950s-era female equality through her decision to appear on the program while pregnant.
Unfortunately, the show's stability proved to be its undoing, as the producers did not see fit to add younger panellists while the regulars aged and the audience
Barris also claims that the advent of multiple cable channels in the 1980s and early 1990s (in cities, towns and rural areas near the border of the United States where people could receive programming from both countries) presented another challenge to the staff of Front Page Challenge and contributed to its demise.[9] Prior to the 1980s when there were no 24-hour news channels competing with Front Page Challenge, each round of the game began with silent black-and-white newsreel footage of the news story in question while a narrator, not heard by the panellists, summarized it. Even after the segments started including colour videotape, the only voice heard introducing the topical issue and the challenger was the voice of the narrator of Front Page Challenge.
Producers continued to use the same off-screen narrator,[10] which made the Front Page Challenge footage less appealing to young people than the multiple
When Front Page Challenge ceased production in 1995, it was the longest continually running non-news program in Canadian television history.[13] Among the contestants on the final show was then-emerging country music superstar Shania Twain.
Episode status
Reruns of the program were broadcast by Canadian cable channel
1960s episodes that featured Menachem Begin, then a Knesset member, Jayne Mansfield,
Guests
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2008) |
- Errol Flynn, 13 January 1959 (CBC Archives video clip)
- Indira Gandhi
- Rick Hansen, 18 December 1987 (CBC Archives video clip)
- William Leonard Higgitt, 7 October 1971
- Gordie Howe
- Boris Karloff
- Eleanor Roosevelt
- Upton Sinclair
- Pierre Trudeau
- Malcolm X, 5 January 1965 (CBC Archives video clip)
References in pop culture
- On Canadian Sesame Street, the game show was parodied as Front Page Vegetable.
- In a 1982 episode of SCTV, the game show was parodied as Headline Challenge, the name being a combination of Front Page Challenge and another headline-based game show, CTV's Headline Hunters.
References
- ISBN 978-0-887-94097-2.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ^ CBS News citation of the heavy publicity of Jayne Mansfield's high IQ
- ^ "Front Page Challenge". Museum of Broadcast Communications. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-887-94097-2.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ^ Blackburn, Bob (30 July 1957). "Televiews: Front Page Challenge Meeting TV Challenge". Ottawa Citizen. p. 17.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
- ProQuest 2316600936.
- ISBN 978-0-771-57662-1.
Further reading
- Barris, Alex. Front Page Challenge: The 25th Anniversary (Toronto: CBC Books, 1981).
External links
- Front Page Challenge at IMDb
- Jackson, Kip; Kennedy, Mark D.B. (4 March 2015). "Front Page Challenge". The Canadian Encyclopedia (online ed.). Historica Canada.
- Front Page Challenge at TVarchive.ca
- Directory of CBC Television Series (F), accessed 4 February 2007
- Biography of John Aylesworth at the Canadian Communications Foundation