Keep Posted

Keep Posted (later known as The Big Issue is an American public affairs TV series on the DuMont Television Network which was sponsored by The Saturday Evening Post for its first two seasons.

Broadcast history

Keep Posted is a 30-minute program that aired on DuMont on Tuesdays at 8:30 pm EST from October 9, 1951, to January 18, 1954. The title was changed to The Big Issue after the Post stopped sponsoring the program in May 1953.
Martha Rountree was the moderator, and Lawrence Spivak and Ray Wood were among the panelists. Both Rountree and Spivak were involved in the creation of Meet the Press on NBC.
Episodes included one in which United States Senators Robert A. Taft and Richard B. Russell debated foreign policy on April 22, 1952. Adoption of a proposed Constitutional amendment to guarantee equal rights for women was discussed by U. S. Representatives Katharine St. George and Emanuel Celler on the January 20, 1953, episode.

Episode status

Only two episodes are known to exist, "Peace in the Middle East", held by the Paley Center for Media, along with another 1952 episode "Should Truman Be Renominated?" as part of the Peabody Award collection.

Critical response

Jack Gould wrote in a review in The New York Times that Keep Posted suffered because Rountree and Spivak tried to make the show noticeably different from Meet the Press. As a result, Gould said, the show was "a good deal less effective than it should be". In particular he cited the questioning of guests by citizens rather than by journalists, He added that most of the questioners were either politicians or advocates for civic movements. Their questions, he said, "ramble all over the lot and often are prefaced with virtual speeches by the panel."