Got a decent response to my Friday blog post about the history of WRGB’s “Little Red Schoolhouse” / “Answers Please” high school quiz show.
Over the past few days, I’ve put in plenty of dates and information from various sources – indicating, wherever possible, dates and times the show aired, opponents, who won, who retired undefeated, and scores if possible.
On several occasions, I was able to find the opponents listed in microfilmed copies of the newspapers of the time – mostly the Albany Times-Union, the Schenectady Gazette and the Schenectady Union-Star. Thankfully, the Albany Public Library has a 10-cents-per-photocopy microfilm machine and a ton of microfilms from the TU; same thing for the holdings of the Gazette and Union-Star from the Schenectady County Public Library.
I was able to acquire several rare photographs of “Little Red Schoolhouse” and “Answers Please” from the Schenectady Museum, thanks to curator Chris Hunter for his help on that front.
And over the weekend, I discovered that the Schenectady County Public Library has a ton of yearbooks of Schenectady-based high schools. Figuring I could only look at one school’s holding of yearbooks at a time, I went through Schalmont High School’s yearbooks – and found they were three-time undefeated champions in the 1981-82 and 1983-84 seasons. Schalmont actually won the final game of the 1980-81 season, and returned to win the first two games of the 1981-82 season, but that counts as undefeated as far as WRGB was concerned.
On the blog, I did receive responses from people who were part of other schools who went on Answers Please; they said they will check their yearbooks and see if they can find any information on dates, opponents and scores. Much appreciated.
I’ve added a link to the original article to my TU blogroll; look over the list if you can and see if your school was represented on the show; if it’s not listed and you know your school appeared, contact me through the blog and give me the information. The goal – Herculean though it is – would be to list the results of every episode, or at least the won-loss records from 1962 to 1989.
I’m also curious as to whether some of these schools kept archives of their school newspapers somewhere, either on microfilm or in file cabinets. Niskayuna High School scanned some 1970’s copies of their school newspaper, “The Warrior,” and I was able to find some listings of their appearance on Answers Please as well.
UPDATE: I was able to add a best-of-three series (that went four games) in the 1970’s between Niskayuna HS and Guilderland HS; the first game was a 100-100 tie, but Niskayuna won two of the next three games and won the tournament.
So anyways, if you were on the show, or if your school was on the show, please respond with whatever information you can provide. Thanks much!
Chuck The Writer 
Sorry just now saw this when I was searching for something else. My Chatham Central High School teammates and I were on Answers Please in December/January 1971-72. We were retired undefeated after three wins, one of them being over Lansingburg and another over maybe St. Joseph’s in Catskill. I am not sure about that. My teammates were Lars Neilsen, who was a superstar junior, David Grant, and Robin Kraham. Our coach was Frank Vosburgh, an English teacher at CCHS. Ed Dague was an excellent host. He settled our nerves by telling us a great story about Governor Nelson Rockefeller walking headfirst into a pillar and exlaiming an expletive. After that we were relaxed and ready.
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