When was the idiom, "I've got some good news and some bad news" first used, or when did it become a common joke?
Learn English – Origin/first known use of the phrase ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news’
idiomsphrases
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Best Answer
'I have some good news and some bad news' in serious contexts
The formula of opening a statement or discussion with the phrase "I have some good news and some bad news" is considerably older than use of the phrasing in jokes. For example, from Herman Koerner, Beleaguered: A Story of the Uplands of Baden in the Seventeenth Century (1898):
And from Gustav Frensson, The Three Comrades (1907):
'I have some good news and some bad news' as a joke setup
The earliest Google Books match involving a good news/bad news setup for a joke appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Biennial and Sixty-ninth Convention of the Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers International Union of America (Montreal, Quebec, September 19–26, 1966) [combined snippets]:
The same crude joke reappears three years later, with its excesses of fake dialect removed, presented at a government conference on Indian affairs. From Federal State Indian Affairs Conference: Stateline, Nevada (August 19–21, 1969):
Also from 1969 we have this item from Jerry Chiappetta, "Even Pros Have Problems," in Field & Stream (February 1969):
From "Think and Grin," in Boys' Life (October 1970):
From Insurance Accounting and Statistical Association, Proceedings (1971) [combined snippets]:
From Yachting, volume 131 (1972) [combined snippets]:
A broader discussion of humorous use of the phrase appears in "Atty. Gen. Younger Discusses 'Good News, Bad News' of Federal Spending Programs in CJ, Law Enforcement," in [California Council on Criminal Justice] Bulletin (1972[?]):
But straightforward use of the formulation didn't disappear. For example, from University of California [San Francisco School of] Pharmacy Alumni Association, Newsletter (Summer 1970), we have this nonhumorous instance:
There are many examples of the phrase as a joke setup from 1972 onward. By the early 1980s, good news/bad news jokes seem to have achieved the status of a joke genre, like "what do you get when you cross A with B" and "how many X's does it take to do Y" and and "a guy walks into a bar." From Susan Judy & Stephen Judy, Introduction to Teaching Writing (1981):
Conclusion
Given the many, many instances of the "good news/bad news" setup from about 1972, and the very small number that appear in Google Books results before 1970, I surmise that it caught on at some point in the late 1960s, and that similar approaches to joke telling in earlier decades did not use that particular wording.
Update (March 2, 2021): An earlier instance of the phrase as a joke setup
An Elephind newspaper database search turns up a slightly earlier instance of "I have some good news and some bad news" as a setup for a joke than the instance cited above from at the bricklayers, masons, and plasterers union meeting of September 19–26, 1966, in Montreal. From "After Prayerful Consideration, They Signed the Constitution," in the [Rusk, Texas] Cherokeean (April 16, 1966):
Interestingly, this is essentially an inversion of the first two jokes noted in the Google Books portion of this answer. There the bad news is the lack of good food, and the good news is the abundance of terrible ersatz food. Here, the bad news is the lack of good food, and the good news is the lack of terrible ersatz food. No wonder people say that good news comes in many forms.