''In the News'' is an American series of two-minute

televised Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

video segments that summarized topical news stories for children and pre-teens. The segments were broadcast in the United States on the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

television network from 1971 until 1986, between Saturday morning

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anim ...

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

programs, alongside features like ''

Schoolhouse Rock! ''Schoolhouse Rock!'' is an American interstitial programming series of animated musical educational short films (and later, videos) that aired during the Saturday morning children's programming block on the U.S. television network ABC. The theme ...

'' and ''

One to Grow On ''One to Grow On'' is an educational public service announcement that broadcast during NBC's Saturday morning line-up from 1983 to 1989, when the network ran cartoons. The name is taken from the custom of putting an extra candle on a birthday ...

'', which aired on competing networks

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

and

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

, respectively. NBC also produced a competing segment called ''Ask NBC News''. The "micro-series" (as it would be labeled today) had its genesis in a series of animated interstitials produced by CBS and

Hanna-Barbera Productions Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ( ) was an American animation studio and production company which was active from 1957 to 2001. It was founded on July 7, 1957, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera following the decision of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to c ...

called ''In the Know'', featuring

Josie and the Pussycats Josie and the Pussycats (sometimes simply known as The Pussycats) are a fictional girl group A girl group is a music act featuring several female singers who generally harmonize together. The term "girl group" is also used in a narrower sense i ...

narrating educational news segments tailored for children. This was eventually transformed into a more live-action-oriented micro-series produced solely by CBS' News division. ''In the News'' segments attempted to explain the essence of complex news stories to children, and to do so in a way that might engage a young audience. Video clips of national or world events and special-interest stories were shown with voice-over narration specifically written with children in mind. Although news stories deemed to be inappropriate for children were not covered on ''In the News'', the series did feature a wide range of current events. The famous ''In the News'' sphere logo was actually two different logos; the first one has a non-spinning sphere while the title, written in something close to

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...

, spins around once, then fades into the news footage. The second logo was a spinning sphere and the title, now written in something close to

Calibri Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2007, with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. In Office 2007, it ...

, kept going around the opposite direction the sphere was moving (at the end of each segment, this logo was shown again, and then faded into the CBS Eye logo in the credits). On occasion, a special mini-documentary segment, ''In the Future'', was presented, examining events and technology that may exist in the near future.

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...

journalists

Christopher Glenn Joseph Christopher Glenn (March 23, 1938 – October 17, 2006) was an American radio and television news journalist who worked in broadcasting for over 45 years and spent the final 35 years of his career at CBS, retiring on February 23, 2006 at the ...

, Doug Poling, and Gary Shepard narrated the segments. Through the early 1980s, they were generally preceded by an animated bumper featuring a character from one of CBS' Saturday morning programs (such as

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Mighty Mouse Mighty Mouse is an American animated anthropomorphic superhero mouse character created by the Terrytoons studio for 20th Century Fox. The character was originally called Super Mouse, and made his debut in the 1942 short ''The Mouse of Tomorro ...

, or

Bugs Bunny Bugs Bunny is an animated cartoon character created in the late 1930s by Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Bros. Cartoons) and voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for his starring roles in the '' Looney Tunes'' and '' ...

) announcing, "Next, another interesting story that's ''In the News''!". It was also often included in the announcement during a show's bumper; "...will return after ''In the News'' and these messages on most of these stations."

''30 Minutes''

In the late 1970s, CBS News produced a Saturday afternoon news magazine for young viewers, '' 30 Minutes'', which was along the same lines as ''In the News'' and the nighttime news magazine, ''

60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

''. The series aired irregularly from 1978 to 1982, with only a handful of repeating episodes, factors that kept the show from catching on widely. Christopher Glenn co-anchored ''30 Minutes''.

Revival and rebroadcasts

The series was briefly revived as part of CBS's all-" educational/informational" Saturday morning lineup during the 1997–1998 season, but without the involvement of original narrators Glenn and Shepard. Three new one-minute segments were produced each week, narrated by

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...

News Washington Correspondent Dan Raviv. Repeats of the original ''In the News'' were seen during commercial breaks on

TV Land TV Land is an American pay television channel owned by Paramount Global through its networks division. Originally a spinoff of Nick at Nite consisting exclusively of classic television shows, the channel now airs a combination of recent and cla ...

in the late 1990s.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:In The News 1971 American television series debuts 1986 American television series endings 1997 American television series debuts 1998 American television series endings 1970s American television news shows 1980s American television news shows 1990s American television news shows 1970s American children's television series 1980s American children's television series 1990s American children's television series American children's education television series CBS original programming CBS News English-language television shows Interstitial television shows Peabody Award-winning television programs American television series revived after cancellation Children's news shows