This Mark Goodson and Bill Todman-produced game show, hosted by Bert Convy, was essentially "The Newlywed Game" with celebrities as the contestants.
Three celebrity couples competed, with the studio audience divided into three "rooting sections," designated by the colors red, blue, and banana. The money won by each couple would be split among the 150 or so people in their corresponding section.
In the first round, the three members of one of the sexes would be offstage wearing headphones. The spouses/partners would have to predict how their better half would answer a question; then each of the offstage people in turn would be patched in to the audio in the studio and would appear on a monitor in front of the other. Each question had a certain amount of money associated with it that was given to the couple, or split among the couples, that matched their answer. (The amount was $150 in the early days of the game, later raised to $300.)
The second round was the same, but with the opposite sex offstage. At the end of the game, the couple with the most money received a $1,000 bonus. In the event of a tie, that bonus would be split; in the event of a 3-way tie, the bonus split between the three couples would actually be $1,002, presumably because the scoreboards couldn't display cents, much less repeating decimals.
At first, in addition to the standard "Newlywed Game"-type questions, some of the questions were "story questions." The host would cue the contestants with the lead-in for a story (e.g., "something that happened in a hotel"); the first one to buzz in would tell a story related to the cue and would then pick a one or two-word clue that would lead their spouse to the same story. The host would read the cue and the clue to the spouse; if they started telling the same story, it was considered a match. This type of question had been used on an earlier Goodson-Todman show called "He Said, She Said," of which "Tattletales" was a partial revival.
Among the frequently appearing couples were Dick Gautier and Barbara Stuart, Allen Ludden and Betty White, Bobby Van and Elaine Joyce, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and William Shatner and Marcy Shatner. Occasionally, Bert Convy would play as a contestant with his wife; during those weeks, Gene Rayburn would fill in as host.
"Tattletales" premiered on CBS on February 18, 1974, at 4:00 P.M. Eastern time, and lasted until March 31, 1978; it then returned on January 18, 1982, and last aired on June 1, 1984.
Reruns have appeared on Game Show Network, with their promos highlighting the fact that many of the couples who appeared on the show have since gotten divorced.