Headline Hunters

      Created by the U.S. game show producing team of Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir, Headline Hunters was one of Canada's longest-running television game shows.  Three contestants competed in a game of guessing the names of newsmakers or events based on a series of clues given in the form of newspaper headlines.  At the start of the game, the name of a Hidden Headline Word that would appear in one of the rounds that night was shown to the home viewers but not to the contestants.  If a player correctly guessed that Hidden Headline Word when it appeared, they won a bonus prize.  At the start of each round, Jim named a category (Person, Place, Thing, or Event) that the players would be identifying.   In round one, the point value started at 100 points.  Announcer Dave Devall read a clue written in the form of a headline.  If no one buzzed in with an answer, Devall read a second headline clue and the point value dropped to 50.  If a third clue was needed, the point value decreased to 40 points.   The fourth clue lowered the value to 30 points and the fifth and final clue to 20 points.  If a player buzzed in with the correct answer, they scored the number of points the clue was worth.  If they answered incorrectly, those points were deducted from their score although a player's score never dropped below zero. Four categories were played in the round.

     Round 2 was played in the same fashion with point values for each headline clue worth 200, 100, 50, 40, and 30 points.  During Round 3, a famous person present in the studio read the headline clues for the subject to be guessed from behind a curtain.  Jim then asked the contestants to either guess the identity of the person or whatever made them famous.  Once the famous person or their claim to fame had been guessed, the person came onstage and talked to Jim for a few minutes.  Round 4 resumed the normal format with the game continuing with as many rounds as possible until time was called.  

     The last round was called The Deadline.  One final set of headline clue was read by announcer Devall starting with 500 points and decreasing by 100 for each headline clue.  The player with the most points at the end of this round won the game and played the Rapid Round bonus.  The contestant was given 60 seconds to identify a series of quickie headlines read rapid-fire by Jim.  The player received $10 for each correct answer and could pass if they could not answer.  At the end of the show, Jim asked one more quickie headline for the home viewers.  The answer was revealed during the closing credits.

     Each year, the nine biggest winners competed in an elimination tournament at the end of each season with the top three winners competing in a final Night of the Champions.  The winner received larger prizes such as trips and cars.  Headline Hunters  was Jim's first truly successful series.  Airing each Friday night at 8:30 p.m., the show dominated the ratings for a decade averaging 1.5 million viewers at its peak in the late 1970s.  The show was the CTV network's third highest-rated show behind Stars on Ice and the Bobby Vinton Show.  Headline Hunters stopped production in 1982 and reruns of the series aired each weekday morning on the CTV network during the 1982-1983 season.