[3] Gleason was joined by Johnny Olson as announcer and Dennis James doing live commercials for sponsor Kellogg's cereals.

Among the tableaux-like backdrops featured in the premiere were Pocahontas rescuing John Smith, three men ogling a girl in an "itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini", a depiction of four statues in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and four members of Billy Watson's Burlesque Beef Trust.

The following Friday (January 27), instead of the game, the broadcast—still identified on-screen with a title card stating You're in the Picture—consisted of Gleason sitting alone in a chair on the now-bare stage apologizing for the previous week's show.

Gleason commented that the program "laid, without a doubt, the biggest bomb in history," adding that it "would make the H-Bomb look like a two-inch salute.

Shortly after the series commitment was completed, CBS picked up on a more permanent basis another talk/variety program from Gleason, American Scene Magazine, which would run from 1962 to 1970.

However, due to a moment during the apology in which Gleason hinted that the coffee cup he was sipping from wasn't really filled with "coffee" (he called it "Chock Full O'Booze"[4]), the show's original sponsor, Kellogg's, pulled out of the series a week later and publicly claimed, "This isn't the show we bought".

They reportedly told CBS executives they were offended by the coffee cup reference, and wanted no further association with the show or Gleason.

The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, author David Hofstede ranked the show at number 4 on the list.

[10] The concept of a contestant putting his or her head through a hole in a portrait and trying to guess the picture was attempted again for a 2013 episode of the UK panel show Celebrity Juice.