[ic] [loop] not working on another table?

[interchange-users@icdevgroup.org (John Allman)]

i'm a newbie to interchange so this may be stupid. i have googled and 
done my best to search the archives but i cant find an answer!

i have created a new table called news. i have created the 
dbconf/mysql/news.mysql file (as you can guess i'm using mysql:), the 
products/news.txt and products/news.sql files. i have added an entry to 
the table. a query statement returns the contents of the table no problem:

[query st=db arrayref=myref sql="select sku from news order by sku"]
<!-- make query, this container text is not used. -->
[/query]
[perl]
                 # Get the query results, has multiple fields
                 $Scratch->{thingycount} = 0;
                 my $ary = $Tmp->{myref};
                 $Scratch->{thingy} = "";
                 foreach $line (@$ary){
                         ($sku) = @$line;
                         $Scratch->{thingy} .= $sku."<br>\n";
                 }
                 return;
[/perl]
skus are [scratch thingy]

however when i try a simple loop it returns nothing and nothing is 
reported as being wrong in the error.log:

[loop  search="fi=news/st=db/ra=yes"]

[loop-field sku]

[/loop]

ive tried the piece of above code, replacing news with products and it 
works away as happy as larry but when i change it to news is just 
returns nothing!

i am using interchange 4.6.5

is there something simple i'm missing?

thanks

John