Information Please
American quiz show with questions submitted by listeners
from archive.org
from archive.org
This podcast has been superseded
by another one, which may contain additional or better-ordered files. (Or this one could just be a duplicate.)
Check the Information Please podcast instead.
Information Please was an American radio quiz show, created by Dan Golenpaul, which aired on NBC from May 17, 1938 to April 22, 1951. The title was the contemporary phrase used to request from telephone operators what was then called "information" but is now called "directory assistance".
The series was moderated by Clifton Fadiman. A panel of experts would attempt to answer questions submitted by listeners. For the first few shows, a listener was paid $2 for a question that was used, and $5 more if the experts could not answer it correctly. When the show got its first sponsor (Canada Dry), the total amounts were increased to $5 and $10 respectively. A complete Encyclopædia Britannica was later added to the prize for questions that stumped the panel. The amounts went up to $10 and $25 when Lucky Strike took over sponsorship of the program.
By 1948, the prizes changed to the following: submitting a question awarded the viewer an Encyclopædia Britannica world atlas, and stumping the panel added a $50 savings bond plus the complete Encyclopedia. Also, they replaced the regular sponsorship with a different sponsor for certain broadcasts.
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