Front Page Challenge

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Front Page Challenge
File:FrontPageChallenge-ProgramPromoSlide CBCMuseum.png Program promotional slide for the CBC television show "Front Page Challenge", on display at the CBC Museum, Toronto.
Starring	Alex Barris (host, 1957) Fred Davis (host 1957-1995) Pierre Berton Allan Fotheringham Betty Kennedy Toby Robins Gordon Sinclair
Country of origin	Canada
Original language	English
Original release
Network	CBC
Release	24 June 1957 – 1 February 1995

Front Page Challenge (aired 1957 - 1995) was a Canadian current events-cum-history program disguised as a game show, in which notable journalists attempted to guess the recent or old news story with which the hidden guest was linked by asking him / her questions, in much the same manner as the American game shows, What's My Line and To Tell the Truth. Upon conclusion of the challenge, the journalists served as a panel of interviewers as they conversed with the guest about the news story in question or about achievements or experiences the guest was known for. 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.

The show was produced and aired by CBC Television.

The guests came from all walks of life, including politicians like Pierre Trudeau and Indira Gandhi, crusaders like Malcolm X, sports figures like Gordie Howe, entertainers like Boris Karloff and Ed Sullivan, and writers like Upton Sinclair. Occasionally the guests were featured for their involvement in a story that otherwise had no connection to their celebrity status. For example, Karloff was featured because he served as a rescue worker following a devastating 1912 tornado in Regina, Saskatchewan, where he was appearing in a play. Jayne Mansfield appeared in late 1961 to represent the recent victory of British prime minister Harold Macmillan's Conservative Party (UK) in parliamentary elections. The American actress, whose high IQ was well-publicized, was filming a movie in the U.K. at the time of the decisive voting. Occasionally, the challenger was one of the panelists themselves, unbeknownst to the other three panelists. After the game, the relevant person simply moved to the guest seat for the interview.

The show ran for nearly forty years and was remarkably stable for its regular panelists, who included journalist/historian Pierre Berton, Betty Kennedy (who later become a Canadian senator), Toby Robins (who later became a movie actress) and columnist Gordon Sinclair. Columnist Allan Fotheringham joined the panel after Sinclair's death. A guest panelist, usually another Canadian journalist or other celebrity, was also part of each episode. The show was hosted by Fred Davis. Alex Barris hosted the earliest episodes in 1957 before stepping aside for Davis, but continued to appear as a guest panellist from time to time and years later wrote a history of the program (entitled Front Page Challenge: The 25th Anniversary, CBC Books, 1981).

In his book, Barris wrote 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. In the same book, journalist Barbara Frum relates 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 slow undoing, as the producers did not see fit to add younger panelists as the regulars aged and the audience demographics became less desirable. In its later seasons the show often went on the road, being videotaped in cities across Canada, which put a heavy strain on Gordon Sinclair in particular, although he made a regular appearance a few days before his 1984 death. Inclement weather sometimes resulted in a studio audience that was hardly filled to capacity in smaller cities far away from Toronto, and the resulting minimal audience response became noticeable to home viewers.

Budget cuts by the CBC also caused provocative American guest challengers like Dick Gregory, Timothy Leary and Martha Mitchell to become a forgotten part of the program's distant past. The list of guest challengers in the back of Alex Barris' book reveals that 1978 was the last year an American traveled to Canada (at the expense of the CBC) to appear on the program. (It was Ann B. Davis, who represented the news that several American celebrities were becoming Born Again Christians.) In an updated 1999 version of his book, Barris revealed that the CBC had started cutting the show's budget as far back as 1978, which ruled out Front Page Challenge's subsidy for flying Americans to the studio, just as the inventory of episodes suggests. Barris said this change later took a devastating toll as new generations of Canadians grew up watching MTV in the 1980s. As American filmmakers began using Canadian locations and hiring unknown actors and background extras, Canadian youths of the late 1980s became more interested in American products. They knew in advance that Front Page Challenge panelists and guests were hardly likely to reference 21 Jump Street, an American-originated series that filmed in British Columbia, so they avoided the quiz show. Budget cuts finally killed Front Page Challenge in 1995, resulting in a major news story about the cancellation that surprised many older people, including Fred Davis. When it left the air it was the longest continually running non-news program in Canadian television history. Among the contestants on the final show was then emerging country music superstar Shania Twain.

Episode status

Reruns of the series aired on a Canadian cable channel called History Television in the late 1990s. No web sites seem to record which episodes were included in the line-up or conspicuously missing from it. Some episodes, including ones with dialogue recalled in Alex Barris' two books, are lost to posterity.

A recent query made by an American interested in the late Bennett Cerf, whom Barris claimed had made "frequent" trips from his New York home to Toronto to be a panelist and guest challenger, reveals that preservation has less to do with the age of an episode and more to do with its historical value to Canadians. A CBC official told the American that VHS cassettes exist of Cerf questioning guest challengers who remain important to Canadian history (the father-in-law of slain South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, E.P. Taylor in 1964 and Stanley Knowles in 1965). A 1967 episode on which Cerf represented the news of the cancellation of the American What's My Line? was not saved. Also lost is a 1958 episode in which panelist Cerf, querying American challenger Jesse Owens, referred to Adolph Hitler as "Mr. Shickelgruber." Therefore, the possibility remains that CBC budget cuts that started in 1978 eliminated not only prospective American challengers but also evidence of those from the past with CBC officials keenly aware of limited storage space. A 1959 episode with Errol Flynn representing Castro's takeover of Cuba can be seen on Youtube. It became valuable when Flynn died a short time after his appearance even though his story had a limited connection to Canadian issues.

Guests

• Errol Flynn, 13 January 1959 (CBC Archives video clip)
• Rick Hansen, 18 December 1987 (CBC Archives video clip)
• Gordie Howe
• Boris Karloff
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Upton Sinclair
• Jayne Mansfield
• Golda Meir
• Indira Gandhi
• Jesse Owens
• Pierre Trudeau
• Malcolm X

References

• Alex Barris, Front Page Challenge: The 25th Anniversary (Toronto: CBC Books, 1981)

External links

• Front Page Challenge at IMDb
• Front Page Challenge at The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Directory of CBC Television Series (F), accessed 4 February 2007