Front Page Challenge

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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 what past news story the hidden guest was linked with by asking questions of the guest, 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 story in question.

The show was produced and aired by CBC Television.

The guests came from all walks of life, including politicians like Pierre Trudeau, 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.

The show ran for nearly forty years and was remarkably stable for its regular contestants, 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 panellist, 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 undoing, as the producers did not see fit to add younger panellists as the regulars aged and the audience demographics became less desirable. In its later seasons the show often went on the road, being taped in cities across Canada. Budget cuts finally killed the show in 1995. 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.