It's News to Me

Did You Know?

• Panelists included actresses Anna Lee and Nina Foch, journalist Quincy Howe, TV hostess Robin Chandler, radio host John Henry Faulk, Yankees announcer Mel Allen, and writer Quentin Reynolds.
• When the series began, it was sponsored by General Foods; later sponsors included Alcoa, Simmons Bedding Company, Andrew Jergens Company, and Amoco.
• The show was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?.

Game play

Each typical episode contained two contestant rounds, followed by a newsmaker round, and occasionally an additional contestant round. In each round, contestants attempted to determine if a panelist's answer was true or false. The contestant began with $25. The contestant and panelists were shown items such as props, drawings, photographs, or motion picture/newsreel footage; sometimes a dramatic performance was presented. A panelist chosen by the emcee supplied a story tying the item to a news event. The contestant decided if the story was true or false, earning $5 for a correct decision and losing $5 for an incorrect one. Play continued until all four panelists had played, and the contestant kept whatever money remained. In the newsmaker round, eyewitnesses or participants in news events played a game similar to I've Got a Secret: panelists questioned the newsmaker to identify the event, and if they failed, the newsmaker received $100.

Broadcast history

The show began with a one-off special on May 11, 1951. That summer, CBS dropped The Goldbergs after Gertrude Berg refused to cooperate with the Hollywood blacklist, leading General Foods to pull its sponsorship. The network first tried replacing it with Who's Whose, a panel game that bombed after just one episode. It's News to Me was then rushed into production, premiering on July 2. It aired through the fall, but by late September CBS reportedly asked General Foods to swap it for a stronger program. Its autumn ratings fell far short of its new lead-in, the hit I Love Lucy. On March 31, 1952, the show gave up its slot to Claudia, The Story of a Marriage. After several more schedule changes, the original run ended on September 12, 1953. It returned as a summer fill-in for Person to Person from July 9 to August 27, 1954.

Episode status

Most episodes of It's News to Me are missing, since the show was preserved on film via kinescope like other live broadcasts of its era. By the summer of 2009, only two episodes hosted by John Daly had been shown on GSN during its black-and-white blocks. A fragment of a Walter Cronkite-hosted episode survives on a 1992 birthday tribute tape for producer Mark Goodson. BUZZR later aired an episode on September 15, 2017, and again on January 16, 2023, as part of its Lost and Found series.