In The #ThrowbackThursday…

…helping young people with their health problems, and other topics of interest!

It’s Interstitials Week once again, and I’m back with two new topical and information segments from our Saturday mornings/weekday afternoons of the past!

Today, we shift away from cartoon characters teaching us school subjects, segments encouraging us to read, misspelled titles, TV actors providing good advice to adults and children, characters teaching us nutrition, and A Squad for Bods, to topics that are “in the news.” A topic so good, that’s the title.

In The News was CBS’s between-cartoons-on-Saturday-morning version of an “interstitial,” running for approximately 1-2 minutes during station breaks between 1971 and 1986. Geared toward children and preteens, the segments discussed a newsworthy subject of interest, and produced by CBS’s news division. The segment had its start prior to 1971 as the child-oriented In the Know, which featured the animated characters of Josie and the Pussycats narrating educational news segments for children. The goal of the segments were to explain complex news segments in a way children could understand, featuring national, world, and special-interest segments. On occasion, technology and events that may exist in the future were featured in In The Future.

Through the early 1980s, the segments would be introduced through an animated bumper by a character from Saturday morning’s CBS lineup saying “Next, another interesting story that’s In the News!” or a bumper during commercials would say “…will return after In the News and these messages.” Beyond that time, the segments didn’t have bumpers and segways.

I particularly love the title card, which has a nice funky 1960s computer-type tone for “music.”

And that was unchanged during the entire 15-year run!

I actually found one of the segments in my digital archives recently, which sparked my interest in discussing this interstitial. It comes from 1985, and talks about “a man who takes very big pictures.”

YouTube user FredFlix has uploaded twenty In The News segments, from various years of its airing.

Upload via FredFlix

The segment was narrated by Christopher Glenn, Doug Poling, and Gary Shepard, and when the segment was revived briefly in 1997 (running until 1998), CBS Radio News Washington Correspondent Dan Raviv.

About that revival…

A revived version of In the News aired as part of CBS’s all-educational/informative Saturday morning lineup during the 1997-1998 television season, with three new one-minute segments produced each week. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look any of these have been uploaded to YouTube. Same with In The Future – I can’t find those either.

In The News explains its topics well, definitely on a level that children would understand, without pandering or patronizing its audience, or covering topics inappropriate for children. I watched CBS Saturday mornings in the mid-late 1980s (alternating with ABC’s lineup), but this was before my time. However, I do like the content and how it is presented. If I was a little bit older at the time, probably closer to ten years old, some of these would have been somewhat interesting. And that introduction is so cool, I really love the funky “computer” tones; they’re nostalgic in their own right!

From Saturday mornings on CBS to weekday afternoons in syndication, for Flashback Friday, we’ll shift our attention away from newsworthy topics for kids to interstitials promoting self-esteem a la, well, pretty much all of the other interstitials I’ve talked about. This one actually started out as a product of CBS Saturday mornings, but had a long life beyond The Eye Network.

This one has a catchy theme song as well!

That’s Throwback Thursday In The News!

Have a great Throwback Thursday!

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