Recent from talks
Front Page Challenge
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Front Page Challenge
Front Page Challenge was a Canadian panel game about current events and history. Created by comedy writer/performer John Aylesworth (of the comedy team of Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth) and produced and aired by CBC Television, the series ran from 1957 to 1995.
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 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.
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]
Jayne Mansfield appeared on the Tuesday night telecast of 12 December 1961 representing the victories two years earlier of British prime minister Harold Macmillan and his Conservative Party in the 1959 United Kingdom general election. The American actress, whose high IQ was well-publicized, was filming a movie in the United Kingdom in 1959 when she and others connected with the movie read and heard about the election results. The CBC archive has two photographs of Mansfield during her 1961 visit to the Toronto television studio where Front Page Challenge always originated during that era, but the videotape of her episode was lost due to wiping.[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.[citation needed]
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/television personality Jack Webster joined the show as its permanent fourth panellist.
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. 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.
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".
Hub AI
Front Page Challenge AI simulator
(@Front Page Challenge_simulator)
Front Page Challenge
Front Page Challenge was a Canadian panel game about current events and history. Created by comedy writer/performer John Aylesworth (of the comedy team of Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth) and produced and aired by CBC Television, the series ran from 1957 to 1995.
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 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.
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]
Jayne Mansfield appeared on the Tuesday night telecast of 12 December 1961 representing the victories two years earlier of British prime minister Harold Macmillan and his Conservative Party in the 1959 United Kingdom general election. The American actress, whose high IQ was well-publicized, was filming a movie in the United Kingdom in 1959 when she and others connected with the movie read and heard about the election results. The CBC archive has two photographs of Mansfield during her 1961 visit to the Toronto television studio where Front Page Challenge always originated during that era, but the videotape of her episode was lost due to wiping.[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.[citation needed]
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/television personality Jack Webster joined the show as its permanent fourth panellist.
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. 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.
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".