The crowing of a rooster and the challenge to "wake up America, it's time to stump the experts" opened the weekly half hour panel quiz Information Please; the durable and popular series had its beginnings on May 17, 1938 over the NBC Blue network. The concept of listeners submitting questions in anticipation of stumping the experts made the somewhat meager cash awards for the material used incidental.

However, at the start of the 1939-40 season the Encyclopedia Britannica was added to the prizes and in later years war bonds valued as high as five hundred dollars made the rewards more attractive. The performance of the panel was a clever mix of highbrow intellectualism with quips and barbed repartee between the panelists which furthered the appeal to a cross section of the radio audience.

Clifton Fadiman served as the moderator of the prestigious panel that included Franklin P. Adams, John Kieran, Oscar Levant, and a parade of guests that ran the gamut from comedians to politicians and from authors to musicians.

Oscar Levant was dropped as a regular in 1944 and his seat was filled by a second weekly guest; however, he subsequently returned to the fold as a frequent guest. The announcers were Don Baker, Milton Cross, Ben Grauer, Ed Herlihy, Jay Jackson, and Ron Rawson. Music was under the direction of Joseph Kahn.

On November 15, 1938 The Canada Dry Ginger Ale Company became the show's first sponsor; The American Tobacco Company's Lucky Strike Cigarettes took over on November 15, 1940 and moved the program to NBC's Red network; but the show's producer Dan Goldenpaul took exception to the "Lucky Strike green has gone to war" commercials and sponsorship was terminated on February 5, 1943. Next in line as sponsor was Heinz Foods whose tenure continued for two seasons before The Socony Oil Company's Mobilgas brought the series under the "Sign of the Flying Red Horse" in the fall of 1945. A move to the CBS network for The Parker Pen Company signaled the start of the 1946-47 season; Information Please began its final year on the air on September 26, 1947 over the Mutual network with co-op commercials. It left the air in June of 1948; however, an unsuccessful attempt to broadcast a transcribed syndicated edition premiered on August 9, 1950. It lasted only a short time and Information Please then disappeared forever from the airwaves.