Network: TVA Television Network
Broadcast Run: 1988 to 1998
Broadcast Medium: Television
In 1988, the TVA network named Claude Charron, a former Quebec Government MP and Minister, as host of a new public affairs program Le Match de la vie. The show’s concept was quite simple, namely, a series of interviews. Le Match de la vie was an enormous hit with the general public and made Claude Charron a very big star.
Broadcast from 1988 to 1998, Charron would talk with public personalities such as Patrick Roy, Robert Bourassa or the father of a family that had won a huge lottery, Jean-Guy Lavigueur, which attracted the program’s first million plus TV audience.
But Charron’s most memorable interview and by far the most touching was a conversation in March 1990 with the Rock ‘n Roller Gerry Boulet, who was suffering from an untreatable cancer, and who would die shortly thereafter. During its ten years on the air, Le match de la vie won seven Gémeaux awards, including three of them for its host.
Written by Yvon Chouinard – September, 2008