The title refers to the Five Ws of journalism: Who, What, Where, When and Why? It was the longest-running news magazine/documentary program in North America and the most-watched program of its type in Canada.
In February 2024, Bell Media announced that W5 would conclude as a regular television series due to cutbacks at the company, but that the branding would be relaunched as an investigative journalism unit of CTV News. The new W5 unit launched in September 2024, and is led by Avery Haines; it will file long-form reports for CTV News platforms such as the CTV National News, and produce occasional documentary specials for CTV under the branding W5: Avery Haines Investigates.
History
It was launched as W5 on September 11, 1966, just after the demise of CBC Television's This Hour Has Seven Days, at a time when the CTV network was on the brink of bankruptcy. The program's magazine format is considered an inspiration for a number of similar programs, including the American program 60 Minutes which premiered two years later.[1]
The program's first executive producer and host was Peter Reilly. He quit only a few weeks into the first season of W5, in a dispute with John W. H. Bassett, who owned the CTV network's biggest station, CFTO-TV in Toronto. Reilly went on to become the first host of the CBC's later current affairs offering, The Fifth Estate. Peter Rehak was executive producer through the 1980s and 1990s.
Robert Hurst oversaw a revamping of the program look in the fall of 1995. Fiona Conway became executive producer but left for ABC News in 1998. Conway was succeeded by senior producer Ian McLeod and after he left Malcolm Fox became the executive producer from September 2000 until September 2009. Anton Koschany served as executive producer from 2009-2021, during which time the program moved into HD and produced an expanded number of episodes per season. He was succeeded by current Executive Producer Derek Miller.
The program's first regular host was Ken Cavanagh, with reports from CTV National News journalists such as Doug Johnson and Frank Drea, who later became a Progressive Conservativemember of Provincial Parliament in Ontario and Trina McQueen, later president of CTV. During the 1970s, Henry Champ was a longtime host, along with Ken Lefolii and Tom Gould. Helen Hutchinson, who also hosted during the 1970s (concurrent with her tenure as co-host of the morning show Canada AM), was one of the first women to gain a prominent position in television news in Canada. Jim Reed joined the programme in 1972 as a field producer and was later appointed as host along with Hutchinson and Champ.
Eric Malling joined W5 in 1990 from CBC's rival news magazine, The Fifth Estate. In 1991, a new team of reporters also joined the program: Susan Ormiston, Christine Nielsen, and Elliott Shiff. The program was called W5 with Eric Malling until Malling moved to hosting the television program Mavericks in 1995.[2]
In 1993–94, an in-depth report on New Zealand showed the results of a nation that had suffered the effects of a debt wall. The report had a significant influence and was used by governments to justify cutting social services. The government of Alberta included transcripts of the program when it sent back rejected grant applications and Ontario Premier Bob Rae cited the program during cabinet debates on the deficit. Author Linda McQuaig criticized the program saying: "It was just full of misinformation," saying that Malling distorted the situation in New Zealand by presenting what was really a short-term currency crisis as something else: national bankruptcy and the loss of credit. The real issue - an overvalued currency - she says, was never brought up. "I'm talking about confusing the issues," she says, "making people believe things that aren't true because that's the point that he wanted to make. You don't need to come out with a technical lie to do that."[3]
In 1996 for its 30th anniversary, the program was rebranded to W-FIVE and became more populist. Hosts included top CTV journalists, including Lloyd Robertson, Craig Oliver and Jim O'Connell.
With broadcast shifting to HD for the 2009–2010 season the program reverted to its traditional title W5 with a revised graphic treatment and a new theme that reflects its investigative nature and culminates in five notes representative of the five Ws of journalism.
Recent hosts have included Robertson, Sandie Rinaldo, Kevin Newman and Lisa LaFlamme (with Robertson continuing to co-host following his 2011 retirement as anchor of the CTV National News until 2016 when he was named special correspondent). W5 has produced such stories as a possible cure for multiple sclerosis ("The Liberation Treatment"), an investigation into fatal shootings by RCMP officers (nominated for a Michener Award), an investigation of abuses at the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children ("The Throwaway Children"), an annual expose of used car dealer trickery, rampant corruption in Canada's immigration system, and personal stories of burn recovery from the Bali bombing.
Since 2000, the program had officially been designated a "documentary series", with only one or two segments filling an hour-long episode, due to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulations that count documentaries, but not older-style newsmagazines, as "priority programming". In the 2012–2013 season, the program began experimenting with loosening the format, with occasional three story episodes.
For a period of time in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the program's introductory theme music used part of "Fool's Overture", a song by the UK band Supertramp. The current theme was composed by Doug Pennock, who has also composed the theme for CTV National News and music for other CTV special projects, including the 2007 two-hour documentary Triumph & Treachery: The Brian Mulroney Story.
On October 24, 2009, CTV unveiled a new look for W5, introduced a new logo and began broadcasting for the very first time in high definition. The title was once again rebranded, back to its original title as W5. This look was further refined with the start of the program's 47th season on September 22, 2012. The start of the 48th season saw the introduction of David Tyler as the current in-show narrator.
Transition to CTV News unit
In February 2024, as part of cuts by Bell Media, it was announced that W5 would conclude as a regular television series, with its final episode airing in March 2024. Plans were announced for W5 to be relaunched as an investigative journalism unit of CTV News, which will produce long-form and documentary features across its platforms (such as the CTV National News).[4][5] The new W5 unit launched in September 2024, with W5 host Avery Haines named managing editor and senior correspondent, Jon Woodward as an investigative correspondent, and TSN writer Rick Westhead serving as a senior correspondent. Its first production, Narco Jungle: The Death Train (a five-part report on the Darién Gap), began airing on the CTV National News on September 30, 2024. The unit will also be producing a series of one-hour documentaries for CTV under the title W5: Avery Haines Investigates, with a series premiere on the Darién Gap to air October 5, 2024.[6]
Controversies
W5 came under controversy during the 1970s when it aired a feature called "Campus Giveaways", hosted by Helen Hutchinson. The feature used incorrect statistics to conclude that foreign students were eroding white Canadians' opportunities for a secondary education and benefitting from public universities that were being funded by Canadian taxpayers, without exploring the statement's backgrounds.[7] The host of the program stated:
... there are so many oriental foreign students that they rarely mix with their Canadian classmates. It's as if there are two campuses at Canadian universities—foreign and domestic. Certainly this Chinese theatre attracts a full house, but not one Canadian student attended.1
It has been alleged that the feature was specifically directed to form a negative view towards Chinese and Chinese Canadians. As well, it did not determine if the people filmed in that particular episode were actually Chinese or Chinese Canadian.[7][8]
The feature led to widespread protests by Chinese Canadians, including Joseph Yu Kai Wong (later founder of the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care). The feature was also criticized by politicians like Bob Rae and Stephen Lewis, both of whom narrated a rebuttal. With the looming threat of a lawsuit, W5 retracted the feature's statement and apologised.[8] The president of CTV at the time, Murray Chercover, issued the following statement on April 16, 1980:
... our critics—particularly Chinese Canadians and the universities—criticized the program as racist; they were right.... We share the dismay of our critics that this occurred. We sincerely apologize for the fact that Chinese Canadians were depicted as foreigners and for whatever distress this stereotyping may have caused them in the context of our multicultural society.2
This event also led to the formation of the Chinese Canadian National Council in order to form a stronger voice representing Chinese Canadians nationwide.
Hosts and producers
Hosts, reporters, and producers associated with the program have included:
Lloyd Robertson is a Canadian journalist and former news anchor who is special correspondent on CTV's weekly magazine series, W5. Robertson served as the chief anchor and senior editor of CTV's national evening newscast, CTV News with Lloyd Robertson, from 1984 to 2011, when he retired from the CTV National News team. He co-hosted W5 from 2011 to 2016.
The National is a Canadian national television news program which serves as the flagship broadcast for the English-language news division of CBC News by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It reports on major Canadian and international news stories, airing on CBC Television stations nationwide Sunday to Friday at 10:00 p.m. local time.
CTV News Channel is a Canadian specialty news channel owned by Bell Media. It broadcasts national and international news headlines, breaking news, and information. The channel is headquartered at 9 Channel Nine Court in the Agincourt neighbourhood of Scarborough in Toronto, Ontario.
This Hour Has Seven Days is a CBC Television news magazine that ran from 1964 to 1966, offering viewers in-depth analysis of the major social and political stories of the previous week.
Eric Malling was a Canadian television journalist.
Avery Hayward Haines is an American-born Canadian television journalist, and currently managing editor, investigative journalist, and host of CTV newsmagazine series W5. Born in New Mexico, United States, Haines and her family then moved to India where they lived for six years before returning to North America. Her career as a reporter began with CFRB radio in Toronto.
Anderson Cooper 360° is an American television news show on CNN and CNN International, hosted by CNN journalist and news anchor Anderson Cooper. The show currently airs weeknights live from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm ET.
Global National is the English language flagship national newscast of Canada's Global Television Network. Editorial and production staff are based out of Global's national news centre at Global BC in Burnaby, British Columbia, with Dawna Friesen presenting from the Global BC studios Mondays to Thursdays, and Farah Nasser presenting from the Global Toronto studios Fridays to Sundays. From 2008 to 2010, the program was the only Canadian network newscast to be regularly anchored from the nation's capital, Ottawa.
Kevin Newman is a Canadian journalist and news anchor. From 2001 to 2010, he was the chief anchor and executive editor of Global National. In August 2014, he became a substitute anchor of CTV National News with Lisa LaFlamme and in September 2016 was named host and managing editor of the weekly Investigative program W5.
Ann Medina is an American Canadian television journalist and documentary producer.
CTV News is the news division of the CTV Television Network in Canada. The name CTV News is also applied as the title of local and regional newscasts on the network's owned-and-operated stations (O&Os), which are closely tied to the national news division. Local newscasts on CTV 2 are also branded as CTV News, although in most cases they are managed separately from the newscasts on the main CTV network.
Robert Hurst is a Canadian newscaster, television executive, and former president of CTV News.
Michael Maclear, OC was an award-winning Anglo-Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former correspondent for various CBC programs and for CTV's W5. He is the great-great-grand-nephew of South African astronomer Sir Thomas Maclear.
Armen Keteyian is an American television journalist and author of 13 non-fiction books, including six New York Times bestsellers. Most recently he was the anchor and an executive producer for The Athletic. Previously he spent 12 years as a network television correspondent for CBS News where he also served as a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes. Keteyian is an 11-time Emmy award winner.
Rosemary Thompson is Vice President of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which publishes Canadian Geographic, the country’s #1 magazine online and in print with 4.3M readers each month. CanGeo Education has built a network of 28,000 educators that work with its free learning materials in the classroom. She is a former senior executive with the National Gallery of Canada, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Canada's National Arts Centre. She worked as deputy bureau chief of the parliamentary bureau for CTV News. She was a reporter and frequent guest host on CTV programs including Question Period and Mike Duffy Live. A veteran political correspondent, she covered 7 election campaigns in the United States, Quebec and Canada.
Warner Troyer was a Canadian broadcast journalist and writer.
Omar Sachedina is a Canadian journalist and news anchor for CTV News. He is currently serving as the chief anchor and senior editor for CTV's national evening newscast CTV National News since September 5, 2022. Previously, Sachedina served as the National Affairs Correspondent for CTV News.
William Robert Cunningham was a Canadian television journalist, who was associated at different times in his career with the CTV, CBC and Global networks.
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