Once upon a time America was glued to radios the way we’re now glued to glowing rectangles that nag us about software updates. The airwaves were full of old time radio quiz shows, with serious-sounding men intoning serious-sounding questions that serious-sounding experts answered with the solemnity of a Supreme Court ruling. Into this world of intellectual chest-thumping swaggered two programs that gleefully took the highbrow format, stomped on it, and left behind a banana peel: It Pays to Be Ignorant and Can You Top This?

One was a parody of the quiz format itself, proudly rewarding idiocy. The other was a joke-swapping radio show where panelists tried to out-gag one another like comedians trapped in a dad-joke fight club. Together, they defined a special corner of 1940s American radio comedy where ignorance was profitable, and bad puns were a competitive sport. Buckle up: we’re diving into the glorious chaos of classic radio panel shows.

America’s Quiz-Show Obsession

In the late 1930s and 1940s, Americans loved quizzes almost as much as they loved jitterbug competitions and double features at the movie theater. Shows like Information, Please! made it fashionable to tune in and hear brainiacs answer tricky questions from listeners. If you wanted to flex your brain, you followed the Information, Please! crowd. If you wanted to flex your funny bone, you found your way to the ridiculous side of the dial, where It Pays to Be Ignorant and Can You Top This? lived.

Both leaned on the growing trend of the radio quiz show format. They promised knowledge, but delivered nonsense. And that’s exactly what audiences wanted while the world was on fire.

It Pays to Be Ignorant — Dumb on Purpose

Launched in 1942, It Pays to Be Ignorant took the familiar trappings of a quiz show and stuffed them with helium. Its host, Tom Howard, looked every bit the straight man, but his real job was to lob slow pitches for his panel of comic ringers to smash into absurdity. The cast—Harry McNaughton, Lulu McConnell, and George Shelton—specialized in answering questions with spectacular wrongness.

Sample question: “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” You’d think the answer would be obvious. (Actually, it’s not. Technically, no one is “buried” there, but Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Dent Grant are “entombed” there. You can save that nugget of wisdom to distract everyone from speculating why you didn’t date very much in high school). Even the seemingly obvious answer wasn’t obvious on this program. Instead of a quick answer, you’d get a ten-minute sideshow about some guy named Grant who owed Lulu five dollars, Harry’s confusion about whether tombs had plumbing, and George cracking wise about Ulysses S. wanting a refund. By the end, you almost forgot the original question existed.

Inside the Bedlam

If you think we’re exaggerating the lunacy of It Pays to Be Ignorant, here’s a slice straight from the 1945 airwaves. Remember: this was sold to the public as a quiz show radio program. “Quiz,” however, was more of a loose suggestion, like “road work ahead” signs that mean you’ll be stuck in traffic until next spring.

The evening would begin with the usual warm-up nonsense. Lulu McConnell might boast about cooking “cold boiled ham” by boiling it in cold water. George Shelton is introduced as “a man who has made a name for himself, but since this is radio we can’t use it.” Already the corn ration is being stretched to breaking point.

Then Tom Howard bravely tries to wrangle the chaos with an actual question:

Tom Howard (Host): What great American actress is the Ethel Barrymore Theater named for?

Lulu McConnell: Mr. Howard, would it be me?

Howard: I said ‘great American actress.’ She is the First Lady of the theater.

McConnell: Well, I’m an actress.

Howard: But you’re no lady.

After several minutes of utter buffoonery, Howard gave up and awarded a prize of $1.65 to the listener who submitted the question. Big money? No. Big laughs? Almost always.

This was the formula, week after week: Howard would lob a question, the panelists would mangle it into oblivion, and the audience would roar. It was less about answers and more about watching professional nitwits weaponize wordplay. The panel didn’t just ignore the questions—they buried them under so many bad puns that archeologists are probably still digging for the original meaning.

If Information, Please! was the Ivy League of 1940s radio quiz shows, then It Pays to Be Ignorant was a food fight in the cafeteria. And judging from the laughter, audiences much preferred a good custard pie to a polished lecture.

The brilliance was that this wasn’t just randomness; it was crafted chaos. The trio leaned heavily on timing, character quirks, and vaudeville-style old time radio humor styles. Audiences roared because the panelists played stupidity so convincingly it bordered on genius. As one fan put it, “You had to be pretty smart to be that dumb.”

Behind the Buffoonery

One of the best-kept secrets of It Pays to Be Ignorant: it was way more scripted than it pretended to be. The panel’s rambling “ad-libs” were carefully written and rehearsed, though delivered with such comic spontaneity that audiences swore it was all off-the-cuff. Like watching a magician pull a rabbit from a hat, you didn’t want to know the trick—you just enjoyed the illusion.

The show hopped networks—NBC, Mutual, CBS—like a tipsy uncle bouncing between bars—before signing off for the final time in 1951. Critics sniffed about “lowbrow nonsense,” but audiences adored it. For many listeners, this was the funniest radio quiz show of its time. Forget the facts; ignorance had better punchlines.

You can listen to episodes of It Pays to Be Ignorant here.

Can You Top This? — Joke Olympics on the Air

If It Pays to Be Ignorant was about wrong answers, Can You Top This? was about endless punchlines. Debuting in 1940, it was hosted by Ward Wilson, who teed up jokes sent in by listeners. Then a panel of professional gagsters—Joe Laurie Jr., Harry Hershfield, and “Senator” Edward Hastings Ford—would try to “top” the joke with their own.

And how did they decide who won? With the infamous laugh meter old time radio device. Yes, a supposed scientific instrument measured how hard the studio audience laughed. Think of it as Rotten Tomatoes, but with giggles instead of critics and absolutely no quality control.

The panelists leaned on a mix of vaudeville humor on radio, topical gags, and jokes so old they probably paid rent in Confederate currency. If one bombed, no problem—another was ready five seconds later. The pace was relentless, a carnival of wisecracks that kept audiences chuckling (or groaning) all the way through wartime blackouts and postwar boredom.

Prizes, Panels, and Punchlines

The beauty of Can You Top This? was that it wasn’t just about hearing old vaudevillians recycle jokes your grandfather probably told in the barbershop. There was money at stake—actual folding cash. At the beginning, if your joke made it onto the show, you pocketed a guaranteed two dollars (enough to buy a steak dinner in 1940, or a hasty swig from an airport bottle of water today). If the panel couldn’t beat your punchline, you scored an extra five.

Later the prize ballooned to the strangely specific sum of eleven dollars, which got whittled down by two bucks every time your joke was topped. If you struck out entirely, you didn’t go home empty-handed—you got a joke book. Yes, that’s right: they compensated failed comedy with… more comedy. It’s like flunking medical school and being handed a first-aid kit.

Eventually the show settled into a more robust payout: $10 for participation, plus a $5 kicker for each panelist your joke managed to trounce. Run the table and you walked away with $25—serious money in the 1940s, and still not bad for a groaner about the boy who stole a petticoat and confessed his moral failing to the judge: “It was my first slip.”

If your gag tied on the laugh meter with a panelist, the tie always went to the listener. Populism in action, one rimshot at a time. A perfect score of 1,000 laughs earned you not only the maximum payday but also induction into the “1,000 Club,” complete with a certificate suitable for framing. As a bonus, every listener got a phonograph recording of Peter Donald telling their joke on the air. Imagine explaining that flex to your grandchildren: “Yes, children, this scratchy record contains the immortal moment when Uncle Louie’s chicken-crossing-the-road joke made network radio history.”

The program itself kicked off on New York’s WOR in 1940, and NBC snapped it up two years later, running it for another dozen years. The emcee role rotated like a game of musical chairs: Roger Bower launched the show, Ward Wilson took over in 1945, and Dennis James filled in whenever the other two were busy. Joe Laurie Jr. held court on the panel until his death in 1954, after which his spot was filled by a revolving door of talent, including Harold Hoffman (who, by day, was a former governor of New Jersey and, by night, a dispenser of corny one-liners). Fred Hillebrand and Bert Lytell also joined the fun, and by the mid-1950s Wilson was back on the panel while Bower returned to the emcee chair.

So if you think today’s reality competitions are odd, remember: this was the 1940s equivalent of America’s Got Talent—except instead of juggling chainsaws, contestants mailed in one-liners about mothers-in-law.

The Joke Factory and Its Shortcuts

Listeners liked to imagine their jokes made it straight onto the air, but in reality most were rewritten by staff writers.

The show would begin with one such gag: “When a man has a birthday, he takes the day off. When a woman has a birthday, she takes a year off.” Each of the panelists then tried to top that gag with one of their own that had to be tied in some way to the topic of the submitted joke.

In their arsenals, the panelists had their own stockpile of one-liners, honed from years on the vaudeville circuit. The “contest” was really a carefully curated laugh machine, but nobody cared as long as the punchlines kept coming.

Was it high art? Absolutely not. Was it comforting to hear seasoned comics trade barbs while you sliced your Victory Garden carrots or darned another pair of socks? You bet. Can You Top This? carved out its niche as the quintessential joke contest radio show.

TV: The Comedy Graveyard

Both shows eventually tried the leap to television. Spoiler: disaster. What sounded spontaneous and hilarious on radio looked forced and sweaty on screen. It Pays to Be Ignorant barely made a ripple before being yanked. Can You Top This? limped along for a bit, but without the magic of imagination, the jokes felt tired.

This was the cruel lesson: parody vs. joke contest radio shows worked because the audience couldn’t see the desperate flailing behind the microphone. Radio let ignorance and wit bloom in the theater of the mind, making even bad jokes seem so much funnier. Television (and the laugh track) shoved the whole thing into harsh studio lights, and the spell broke.

You can listen to episodes of Can You Top This? here.

Impact, Influence, and Questionable Longevity

Despite fading from the airwaves, the DNA of these programs lingers. It Pays to Be Ignorant influenced everything from Hollywood Squares to Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, and many political careers where being wrong is often funnier than being right. Can You Top This? lives on in every pun-heavy podcast and open mic night where one comic interrupts another with, “That reminds me of a joke…”

Their reliance on panel banter radio comedy and the blurred line between scripted vs improvised radio shows gave later generations a blueprint for how to stage “spontaneity.” Sure, some of the humor has aged about as well as a glass of milk left on a radiator, but in their moment, they were cultural comfort food.

It Pays to Be Ignorant vs. Can You Top This?

So which was better? That depends. If you liked watching fake dunces bicker about the obvious, It Pays to Be Ignorant radio show was your jam. If you wanted rapid-fire gags and didn’t mind that half of them were old enough to collect Social Security, the Can You Top This? radio show scratched the itch.

The difference between these old time radio comedy shows of the 1940s boiled down to style: one parodied knowledge, the other competed in joke volume. Both gave audiences relief from the anxieties of war and postwar adjustment. And both proved that laughter—no matter how dumb or groan-inducing—was worth more than facts during hard times.

Conclusion: Ignorance and Punchlines Never Go Out of Style

In the end, these shows weren’t about trivia, jokes, or even competition. They were about giving audiences permission to laugh at the absurd. It Pays to Be Ignorant and Can You Top This? remind us that in moments of national stress, sometimes the most valuable thing isn’t information—it’s a good belly laugh.

Give a listen to these classic shows, and the next time someone tries to stump you with trivia or causes everyone to groan with a corny joke, you’ll have the punchlines, the payouts, and enough witty responses to fill a laugh meter all by yourself.

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