This Hour Has Seven Days
Encyclopedia
This Hour Has Seven Days is a controversial CBC Television
newsmagazine
which ran from 1964 to 1966. The show, inspired by the BBC-TV and NBC-TV 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. Many elements of this show inspired the tabloid talk show
genre in later decades.
, Laurier LaPierre
and Carole Simpson (not to be confused with the now-retired ABC
weekend news anchor of the same name
. 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 pertaining to the Steven Truscott
case, 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.
inquiry.
A parliamentary committee hearing was convened, and Prime Minister
Lester Pearson appointed Vancouver Sun
publisher Stuart Keate as a special investigator. CBC president Alphonse Ouimet
told the committee that CBC management had been battling the show's producers for two years, and that the show had consistently ignored CBC policies.
Following two weeks of mediation, Keate said it was clear that there had been "mistakes made on both sides" and recommended that the CBC board of directors do a better job of explaining to the public its decision to fire Watson and LaPierre. CBC directors immediately reaffirmed the firing of Watson and LaPierre, while admitting that the way they were fired had been a mistake.
The dispute heated up again in July, leading producer Douglas Leiterman to halt work on a new season of programs. Leiterman said he was told by CBC that his contract for the show would only be renewed if he signed a pledge to behave himself, and that he believed that Bud Walker—the CBC vice-president who had fired Watson and LaPierre—had been given a promotion to oversee all CBC English programming. The CBC denied that Walker had been promoted, fired Leiterman and cancelled the show.
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 Canadian satirical sketch comedy series begat in 1993, This Hour Has 22 Minutes
, which took both its name and a comedic variation on Seven Days-style ambush interviews from the earlier show. Shortly after Seven Days ended the rival CTV Television Network
launched W5, a similar program, which continues to air in the 2010s (Watson contributed to this series on occasion).
Watson continued to produce programming for the CBC, including the 1988 documentary series The Struggle for Democracy. He also produces and narrates The Heritage Minutes
, which are made for the Historica Foundation and given to all broadcasters who want them (receiving some 50,000 showings per year across Canada). 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.
honoured This Hour Has Seven Days as a MasterWorks recipient.
CBC Television
CBC Television is a Canadian television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster.Although the CBC is supported by public funding, the television network supplements this funding with commercial advertising revenue, in contrast to CBC Radio which are...
newsmagazine
Newsmagazine
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published piece of paper, magazine or a radio or television program, usually weekly, featuring articles or segments on current events...
which ran from 1964 to 1966. The show, inspired by the BBC-TV and NBC-TV satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
series That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
, was created by Patrick Watson and Douglas Leiterman
Douglas Leiterman
Douglas Leiterman is a former Canadian television producer.He was born in 1927 in South Porcupine, Ontario. He has a brother, cinematographer Richard Leiterman, and a sister, Elaine Campbell, who is married to producer Norman Campbell....
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. Many elements of this show inspired the tabloid talk show
Tabloid talk show
Tabloid talk shows are a genre of American television programming talk shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through broadcast syndication, this genre originated with The Phil Donahue Show and was popularized by the...
genre in later decades.
Overview
The show debuted on October 4, 1964, with hosts John DrainieJohn Drainie
John Robert Roy Drainie was a Canadian actor and television presenter, who was called "the greatest radio actor in the world" by Orson Welles....
, Laurier LaPierre
Laurier LaPierre
Laurier L. LaPierre, OC is a retired Canadian Senator and former broadcaster, journalist and author. He is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada....
and Carole Simpson (not to be confused with the now-retired ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
weekend news anchor of the same name
Carole Simpson
Carole Simpson is a broadcast journalist, news anchor, and author- Biography :Simpson, a graduate of the University of Michigan, began her career on radio at WCFL in Chicago, Illinois. She moved to television at Chicago's WMAQ and onto NBC News in 1974, becoming the first African-American woman...
. Simpson was soon replaced by Dinah Christie
Dinah Christie
Dinah Barbara Christie is a Canadian comedic actor and singer.The daughter of actors Robert and Margot Christie, she came to Canada at the age of two with her parents and grew up in Toronto. At age 13, she worked as a call boy at the Stratford Festival and became an apprentice at the Festival in...
, 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
Beryl Fox
Beryl Fox is a Canadian documentary film director and film producer.-Biography:After graduating from the University of Toronto she was hired by the CBC and worked there from 1962 to 1966, first as a script assistant and researcher and then as a film director. Fox had a gift for understanding...
, Donald Brittain
Donald Brittain
Donald Brittain, O.C. was a film director and producer with the National Film Board of Canada.Fields of Sacrifice is considered Brittain's first major film as director....
, Allan King
Allan King
Allan Winton King, OC was a Canadian film director.-Life:During the Depression, King attended Henry Hudson Elementary School in Kitsilano, Vancouver...
, Warner Troyer
Warner Troyer
Warner Troyer was a Canadian broadcast journalist and writer.Troyer was born in Cochrane, Ontario, the son of Gordon Troyer, a Presbyterian circuit minister...
, Jack Webster
Jack Webster
John Edgar "Jack" Webster, CM was a Scottish-born Canadian journalist, radio and television personality.-Life in the United Kingdom:...
, Larry Zolf
Larry Zolf
Larry Zolf was a Canadian journalist and commentator.Zolf was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He earned a B.A. from the University of Winnipeg, and then received a Masters degree in Canadian history from the University of Toronto. In 1962, he joined the CBC...
and Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...
.
One documentary commissioned by This Hour, Fox's Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
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
Munsinger Affair
The Munsinger Affair was Canada's first national political sex scandal. It focused on Gerda Munsinger, an alleged East German prostitute and Soviet spy living in Ottawa who had slept with a number of cabinet ministers in John Diefenbaker's government....
, a 1966 sex scandal involving former federal Minister of Defence Pierre Sévigny
Pierre Sévigny
Joseph Pierre Albert Sévigny, PC, OC, CD, VM, ED was a Canadian soldier, author, politician, and academic. He is best known for his involvement in the Munsinger Affair....
. 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 pertaining to the Steven Truscott
Steven Truscott
Steven Murray Truscott is a Canadian man who was sentenced to death in 1959, when he was a 14-year old student, for the murder of classmate Lynne Harper...
case, a report on the Miss Canada
Miss Canada
Miss Canada was a scholarship competition for young women in Canada. It was founded in Hamilton in 1946. The first broadcast of the Miss Canada pageant aired in 1963 on CTV. The late Peter Jennings was host of the pageant in 1964....
pageant was criticized as journalistic "poaching" because the rival CTV Television Network
CTV television network
CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...
had exclusive coverage rights to the event, and an interview with members of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
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.
Cancellation
Concerned about the show's approach to the news, the CBC fired hosts Watson and LaPierre in April 1966, just before the end of the TV season. This resulted in a public outcry for weeks as viewers organized demonstrations, wrote letters and made angry phone calls, CBC staff threatened to resign, newspaper editorials fulminated about political interference in the decision, and politicians demanded a parliamentaryParliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...
inquiry.
A parliamentary committee hearing was convened, and Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
Lester Pearson appointed Vancouver Sun
The Vancouver Sun
The Vancouver Sun is a daily newspaper first published in the Canadian province of British Columbia on February 12, 1912. The paper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. It is published six days a week, Monday to Saturday...
publisher Stuart Keate as a special investigator. CBC president Alphonse Ouimet
Alphonse Ouimet
J. Alphonse Ouimet, was a Canadian television pioneer and president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1958 to 1967....
told the committee that CBC management had been battling the show's producers for two years, and that the show had consistently ignored CBC policies.
Following two weeks of mediation, Keate said it was clear that there had been "mistakes made on both sides" and recommended that the CBC board of directors do a better job of explaining to the public its decision to fire Watson and LaPierre. CBC directors immediately reaffirmed the firing of Watson and LaPierre, while admitting that the way they were fired had been a mistake.
The dispute heated up again in July, leading producer Douglas Leiterman to halt work on a new season of programs. Leiterman said he was told by CBC that his contract for the show would only be renewed if he signed a pledge to behave himself, and that he believed that Bud Walker—the CBC vice-president who had fired Watson and LaPierre—had been given a promotion to oversee all CBC English programming. The CBC denied that Walker had been promoted, fired Leiterman and cancelled the show.
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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
newsmagazine 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
and the Canadian satirical sketch comedy series begat in 1993, This Hour Has 22 Minutes
This Hour Has 22 Minutes
This Hour Has 22 Minutes is a weekly Canadian television comedy that airs on CBC Television. Launched in 1993 during Canada's 35th general election, the show focuses on Canadian politics, combining news parody, sketch comedy and satirical editorials...
, which took both its name and a comedic variation on Seven Days-style ambush interviews from the earlier show. Shortly after Seven Days ended the rival CTV Television Network
CTV television network
CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...
launched W5, a similar program, which continues to air in the 2010s (Watson contributed to this series on occasion).
Watson continued to produce programming for the CBC, including the 1988 documentary series The Struggle for Democracy. He also produces and narrates The Heritage Minutes
Heritage Minute
Heritage Minutes, also known officially as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, are sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. They appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies...
, which are made for the Historica Foundation and given to all broadcasters who want them (receiving some 50,000 showings per year across Canada). 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.
Episode status
In 2001, the CBC reaired a number of old episodes of This Hour as a summer series.Legacy
In 2002, the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of CanadaAudio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada
The Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada was a charitable non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the preservation of Canada’s audio-visual heritage, and to facilitating access to regional and national collections through partnerships with members of Canada's audio-visual community...
honoured This Hour Has Seven Days as a MasterWorks recipient.
External links
- CBC Digital Archives – This Hour has Seven Days
- This Hour Has Seven Days, Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsMuseum of Broadcast CommunicationsThe Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...