Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 17 May 1938. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
← The Other Dial
1938–1951 · NBC Blue, then Mutual
Information Please
Listeners tried to stump the panel, and mostly failed
The premise was flattering to everyone: send in a question, and if the panel cannot answer it you win an encyclopaedia. The panel almost always could. What makes it durable is that the show is genuinely funny — Oscar Levant was on it for the insults, not the erudition — and that it treated a mass audience as capable of enjoying literary quotation at speed. American radio never made anything else quite like it, and nothing on either side of the Atlantic has since managed the same mixture of learning and malice.
219 broadcasts · 8 years held · New York
219 surviving broadcasts, indexed by programme number and guest. Recordings held by the Internet Archive.
193812
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 18 October 1938. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 16 May 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 10 October 1939. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 1 October 1940. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 7 February 1941. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 13 June 1941. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 21 November 1941. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 19 June 1942. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 4 December 1942. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 26 April 1943. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).
Information Please
Originally broadcast on NBC, 8 November 1943. Transferred from the Internet Archive's Information Please collection (public domain).