1 9 5 6 – 1 9 5 7 (USA)
Contestants on the Saturday night CBS show You’re On Your Own had free access to anything on the stage that would help them find answers to the questions posed by the host, actor Steve Dunne.
They need not know everything, only be able to use the correct source: directories, record albums, telephone books, etc, so ingenuity and memory were the order of the day.
The faster they were at ferreting out the correct answers, the more money they could win – as much as $25,000 on a single night. This was long before Google existed, natch.
By the end of its short run, however, the show had devolved into a stunt show, on which contestants who gave incorrect answers to general knowledge questions had to pay the consequences.
Host
Steve Dunne