Country of origin Canada No. of seasons 2 Original network CBC Television Final episode date 29 June 1969 Number of seasons 2 Genre Current affairs | Original language(s) English Running time 30 minutes First episode date 24 September 1967 Network CBC Television Presented by John Saywell Executive producer Perry Rosemond | |
Directed by Garth Goddard
Ray McConnell
Jack Sampson | ||
The Way It Is is a Canadian public affairs television series which aired on CBC Television from 1967 to 1969.
Contents
Premise
Following the cancellations of Close-Up, Sunday and This Hour Has Seven Days, this new journalistic series occupied the traditional Sunday night current affairs time slot on CBC.
The set included three screens which displayed images projected from behind.
Jan Tennant was a script assistant who later became one of the network's announcers. Story editors included Barbara Amiel and Tim Kotcheff.
John Saywell, a Toronto professor, hosted this series. Other presenters included Warren Davis, Peter Desbarats, Ken Lefolii, Percy Saltzman, Patrick Watson and Moses Znaimer. Pierre Trudeau was among the series guests.
The series often featured long-form documentaries. "Mr. Pearson", a profile of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, was originally completed in the mid-1960s. It was not broadcast until this series, after director Richard Ballentine made minor edits, added some narration and adjusted the audio mix. Douglas Leiterman (This Hour Has Seven Days) produced "Fasten Your Seatbelts: A Report On Airline Safety" as a co-production with the US Public Broadcasting Service. Donald Shebib produced films such as "San Francisco Summer 1967" and "Good Times, Bad Times" for the series. Beryl Fox's documentary "Vietnam, Last Reflections On A War" was also featured.
The Way It Is was cancelled in 1969 by Knowlton Nash when he became chief of the CBC's news and public affairs.
Scheduling
This hour-long series was broadcast on Sundays at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern). Its first season ran from 24 September 1967 to 23 June 1968, then its second season was from 29 September 1968 to 29 June 1969.