This Hour Has Seven Days
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This Hour Has Seven Days was a controversial CBC Television newsmagazine which ran from 1964 to 1966. The show, inspired by the British satire series That Was The Week That Was, was created by Patrick Watson and Douglas Leiterman as an avenue for a more stimulating and boundary-pushing brand of television journalism. CBC executives believed the show went beyond the limits of journalistic ethics and cancelled the show, leading to allegations of political interference.
The show debuted on October 4, 1964, with hosts John Drainie, Laurier LaPierre and Carole Simpson. Simpson was soon replaced by Dinah Christie, and Watson himself replaced Drainie in the show's second season when Drainie (who died in 1966) was too ill to continue with the series.
The show used a one-hour newsmagazine format which combined satirical songs (performed by Simpson or Christie) and sketches with hard news interviews, reports and documentaries. Personalities associated with the show as reporters, interviewers or documentarians included Beryl Fox, Donald Brittain, Allan King, Warner Troyer, Jack Webster, Larry Zolf and Pierre Trudeau.
One documentary commissioned by This Hour, Fox's Vietnam War film Mills of the Gods, became one of the most famous Canadian documentary films ever produced.
One of the most dramatic techniques was to ambush politicians and other figures at their homes or on their way to work and ask them difficult questions. Many leading figures were very poor at these unrehearsed-for interviews.
The show was also instrumental in news coverage of the Munsinger Affair, a 1966 sex scandal involving former federal Minister of Defence Pierre Sévigny. When Zolf showed up on Sévigny's doorstep in pursuit of the story, Sévigny whacked Zolf on the head with his cane.
Among other controversies inspired by the show, LaPierre was once shown wiping away tears on the air after a filmed interview, a report on the Miss Canada pageant was criticized as journalistic "poaching" because the rival CTV Television Network had exclusive coverage rights to the event, and an interview with members of the Ku Klux Klan was deliberately engineered to provoke an on-air reaction when a black civil rights activist was brought in, unannounced, to join the interview partway through.
[edit] Cancellation
Concerned about the show's approach to the news, the CBC cancelled This Hour on May 8, 1966. This resulted in a public outcry, perhaps the largest for any program in Canadian television history. The show remained in the news for weeks as viewers demonstrated, wrote letters and made angry phonecalls, CBC staff threatened to resign, newspaper editorials fulminated about political interference in the decision, and politicians demanded a parliamentary inquiry. The show remained one of the most popular on television.
The show's coverage of the Munsinger Affair, just weeks before its cancellation, was believed by some observers to be a major reason for the CBC's efforts to shut the show down.
A parliamentary committee hearing was convened, and Prime Minister Lester Pearson appointed a special investigator. The final reports chastised both sides in the dispute, but was particularly harsh with the CBC for its heavy-handedness and bureaucratic timidity.
[edit] Legacy
This Hour Has Seven Days is still considered one of the most important and influential productions ever aired by a Canadian television network, bringing new and innovative creative techniques into the mainstream of television journalism.
In the initial aftermath of its cancellation, Canadian journalists were often intimidated by the prospect of taking on controversial issues. However, the show inspired both the American newsmagazine 60 Minutes and the 1990s Canadian satirical sketch comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which took both its name and a comedic variation on Seven Days-style ambush interviews from the earlier show.
Watson continued to produce programming for the CBC, including the 1988 documentary series The Struggle for Democracy and the public service vignettes Heritage Minutes. In 1989, he was named chairman of the CBC, a position he held until 1994.
LaPierre, who also continued to produce CBC programming and authored a number of books on Canadian history, was named to the Senate in 2001.
Christie continued to work as a singer and comedic actress.
In 2001, the CBC reaired a number of old episodes of This Hour as a summer series.
In 2002, the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada honoured This Hour Has Seven Days as a MasterWorks recipient (video clip).
