Pick the Winner

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Pick the Winner was the title of a half-hour political television series about the 1952 and 1956 election contests for President of the United States between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. It was moderated by Walter Cronkite.

The 1952 edition was aired from August 14 weekly until the Presidential election on both CBS and the DuMont Television Network. It was sponsored on both networks by the Westinghouse Electric company. It was broadcast on Thursday nights at 9 PM Eastern time except for the special final pre-election edition which was aired on the Monday night before the election was on Tuesday. Various spokesmen for both the Democratic and Republican parties were on hand to explain the positions, and claimed relative merits of, their respective groups. On the night before the election, various correspondents gave their best guesses as to the winner of the presidency and various other major races on a special late edition broadcast from 10:45 to 11 PM Eastern.

The 1956 edition of the program was very similar to the one outlined above, with the except that by this time the DuMont network was out of business and the program was shown solely on CBS as a consequence. This time, the show was seen from 7:30 to 8 PM on Wednesday nights. The final edition of Pick the Winner was broadcast on October 31, 1956. This format was not renewed by CBS for coverage of subsequent presidential elections, although the network continued to provide extensive coverage of later races.