Q:  Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is now on at 2 in the morning in my town. Why does that happen? Is there not another station that can put it on at a time we can see it?

A:  I hate to say this is where TiVo and the traditional VCR or a DVD recorder have to suffice. We have the same problem in Memphis. Millionaire is now on at 3:05 a.m. and is all but forgotten in the mid-South. Where we are, most people don't even know the show is still being produced. You have one of two problems (or possibly both) in your market. Sometimes, the distributor (Buena Vista Television) is willing to place the show on a top-grade network affiliate even in a post-midnight slot, rather than on a weak UHF CW or independent station in a morning or afternoon time period. The problem with that is the show receives almost no promotion from the station on which it airs. The other possibility is a poorer one: that the station carrying WWTBAM in your market is the only one which was willing to take the show and the only slot available was at 2 in the morning. If it is a Top 50 market, BVT (or a distributor for any other show) is willing to take what it can get for national advertisers, just to keep the program in a significant city. I know it's frustrating. It is for us, too, because with a couple of 8 a.m. classes to teach each week, we're not sitting up until 3 a.m.

Q:  With the popularity of Deal or No Deal and the other networks bringing on quiz shows, what are the chances ABC will finally do another Super Millionaire?

A: Not to be flippant but the chances of that appear to be slim and none and slim just left the room. ABC has signed for a couple of new Endemol games. The first one you'll see is Show Me the Money with William Shatner as host, which begins taping this weekend. Endemol is the hot game show company at the moment and the networks are anxious for the next Deal to light up their ratings. Unfortunately, for all of the many Millionaire enthusiasts who are still out there, the show as a prime time option appears to be yesterday's news. You always have a chance of a return but don't hold your breath on it.

Q:  I have an odd question but this has always confused me. It came to me again last week when I saw Number Please and you said it was an ABC show. But Bud Collyer was doing To Tell the Truth on CBS at the same time. How did emcees do shows on two different networks? I thought networks wouldn't allow you to do shows for other networks.

A:  That would be much more difficult today than yesterday. In that era, up until the mid-1960s, advertising agencies largely controlled the time slots on the networks. They bought the time outright and then developed shows to promote their products. So, if an ad agency and a producer wanted Bud Collyer, they usually got him, even if he was doing a show on another network. Here's what would not happen: a host would not have done two separate daytime shows, period, but particularly two different daytime shows on opposing networks. The restriction would have been one daytime show and one nighttime.

 When Dotto, a CBS daytime show, went nighttime, Colgate-Palmolive opted to place it on NBC because it received a better time slot than the one CBS was offering. But since the ad agency controlled the show, it wanted Jack Narz for both versions, so Jack appeared on opposite networks. At the end of the show, announcer Ralph Paul would say, "Be sure to tune in tomorrow for daytime Dotto on another network."

 You may remember a past FAQ when we answered that Bud almost did not host the daytime To Tell the Truth because at the time CBS began considering an afternoon version, Bud was still doing Number Please on ABC. In fact, Gene Rayburn, Merv Griffin, and even Tom Poston from the nighttime panel were mulled as possibilities. CBS even seriously considered Arthur Godfrey, who was still under contract to the network and had just left Candid Camera after a falling out with Allen Funt. However, ABC canceled Number Please after a year's run and Bud was freed to do daytime Truth when it premiered in the spring of 1962.

Q:  When GSN ran daytime To Tell the Truth, I saved most of the episodes. I noticed that on some of the early ones, Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle were not on it. Why not?

A:  The theory initially was for the daytime show to have a different look and feel from the nighttime show by introducing fresh personalities on the panel. Phyllis Newman, whose primary fame came from Broadway, was the only recurring panelist. However, among those who appeared several times were: Joan Fontaine, Sally Ann Howes (who often frequently populated the nighttime show), June Lockhart, Sam Levenson, Barry Nelson (who almost became a daytime regular), Dick Shawn, Joan Benny (Jack's daughter, who never could shed the "Jack Benny's daughter Joan" in TV Guide details), Pat Carroll, Chester Morris, Ann Sheridan, Lee Meriwether, Jack Carter and singer Joanie Sommers.

 When Fred Silverman took over as daytime programming chief in the mid-1960s at CBS, he felt the identity of the nighttime panel was too synonymous with the show and proceeded to sign them to do both versions. However, a brief transition period was required because Newman still had an extended contract for the daytime show. So, for about a month, Phyllis continued in the Peggy Cass seat. Finally, she was paid off for the remainder of her contract and Peggy joined the daytime panel.

Q:  Why did Bob Stewart leave Goodson-Todman after creating such great shows? Does he still get royalties for his shows?

A:  An old story which Mr. Stewart says is true is that when he sat down with Mark Goodson to tell him he was considering leaving to start his own game show company, Goodson said: "Bob, why do you want to leave? We've made you a prince." Mr. Stewart replied: "That's true, but I want to be a king."

 For readers who do not remember or know: Bob Stewart created The Price Is Right, Password and To Tell the Truth for Goodson-Todman, arguably three of the company's five biggest hits prior to the Family Feud and CBS Match Game era. Yet, in the Goodson-Todman company, the title of "producer" was not easily dispensed. In its early years, a number of the key people who actually produced shows were only listed as "associate producer." You never saw the title "created by" in the credits.

 For Mr. Stewart to jump to an income level of permanent security, he had to take the risk of forming his own company and putting together his own team of creative people. His first sale was Eye Guess, which had a three-year run on NBC. Over the years, he created nearly 20 formats, but his one megahit was Pyramid----which, ironically, was dropped by CBS after a year and without that perceptive pickup in 1974 by ABC for a late afternoon slot almost immediately, we may never have known of that show as a classic.

 In 1996, Mr. Stewart sold his entire library and formats to Sony Pictures Television with the rerun rights going to GSN. Separate prices were negotiated for both the reruns and for the rights to the formats.

Q:  Back in the '70s and early '80s when game shows aired once a week in syndication, why did Wheel of Fortune never have a weekly nighttime edition?

A:  That is actually one of the most FAQs we receive from people over 40 who remember the original prime time access era. Usually, we're asked how in the world Wheel could have slipped through the cracks, considering the legend it is with 21 straight seasons as the number one syndicated show.

 Actually two attempts were made to distribute a weekly Wheel at night with Chuck Woolery. Len Firestone, who syndicated To Tell the Truth and the 1972-73 I've Got a Secret, attempted a nighttime version in 1977. Sales covered only 48 percent of the U.S. (you needed at least 70 percent for a firm "go"), so the project died. In 1980, Rhodes Productions---which also distributed nighttime Hollywood Squares---pitched a nighttime Wheel. It, too, failed to sell---in no small part because the market was dying for weekly evening shows in favor of five-a-week strips (Family Feud expanded from weekly to nightly that season).

 As to why stations did not jump at Wheel, some of it has to lie in the fact that the show was never a major hit on NBC in daytime, even though it had a long, long run. When Lin Bolen first scheduled it, Wheel did win its time slot and skewed younger than Gambit, CBS's 10:30 a.m. show. So, in August 1975, CBS promptly moved The Price Is Right opposite and that was like a smack in the teeth to Wheel. An attempt to compete head-to-head with Price when it expanded to an hour was a disaster and only lasted a few weeks. With, at best, a mediocre daytime performance, station managers did not see Wheel as a significant nighttime threat.

 We can tell you when Wheel was finally sold in 1983 as a nightly strip to local stations, some NBC stations were not even carrying the daytime version, opting for syndicated talk shows instead. Many program managers took it in a state of desperation because nothing they threw up against Family Feud in the evening had worked. Wheel was even considered to be a suicide move in some cities. By February 1984, Wheel began its slow rise and by May, the trade publications were calling it a Feud-killer.

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I clicked on variety.com Tuesday morning and had to re-read the teaser line three times. Could it be that my personal all-time favorite game show is actually returning? Might it be that television may actually do a revival right?

The news that CBS has optioned a revival of Name That Tune as a hybrid game/variety show for prime time is advancing Christmas to early October.

To top that, the network and production company has picked the absolute ideal host for a modern-day tune: Donny Osmond. Now, if Les Moonves and his minions will just buy the pilot and actually put it on the air next year, the package will be complete.

For musical nuts, such as I am, Name That Tune was a weekly trip to paradise, even if I did here "Bali Hai" a few too many times on the seventies version. For more than 20 years, I've heard over and over people tell me you can't bring back the show because today's music just does not lend itself to the classic format. Fiddlesticks! Sure, if you butcher it as VH1 did with that dreadful Name That Video adapation five years ago. That was about as appealing as a peanut butter and pickle sandwich.

If the remake's executive producers John Watkin and Eamon Harrington can pull off what they are promising, Name That Tune may well be back in business. Their idea is to turn it into a combination game and variety show with live musical performances that have a classic variety show feel.

In a sense, their plan is parallel to what Fox did with American Idol. Face it: other than the contemporary acoutrements, Idol is nothing more than a remake of Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour. Yet, the shrewdness of Idol's producers is borne out in the broad range of music they require of the contestants. At some point during the five-month competition, you'll see a style of music you like. The kids have to sing Big Band as well as current Billboard favorites. They have to dig deep into the Elvis/Bill Haley/Carl Perkins era as well as hip hop. Had Idol strictly been a show where modern pop favorites were performed, it would have---at best---remained a summer contest, not a regular season megahit.

This is where Osmond, as a host, is an inspired choice. You're talking about one of the world's veteran musical performers with more than 40 years of experience under his belt. He has those two years of game show experience in his portfolio in doing Pyramid. Plus, he will be able to interface with credibility with virtually all of the music legends and contemporary stars who trot out their hits.

I'm even intrigued by the planned bonus round for this show. Giving away a potential $1 million is not new any more....it's how one gives it away which is the selling point. Watkin and Harrington are planning a Million Dollar Minute, in which a family pair of contestants will have to name 15 songs in 60 seconds to win the seven figures. That's a longer and broader challenge than the old Golden Medley. Yet, if the teams are composed of relatives from two different generations, they'll have a fighting chance to stay in the game. My only suggestion: change it to Million Dollar Medley, just as a throwback to the classic game.

I never saw the Name That Tune episodes emceed by Red Benson and Bill Cullen. I do remember one of my earliest television favorites as George DeWitt, who took over the show in 1955. George had a congenial demeanor, a subtle wit and was a terrific singer. He made the show appointment TV. In addition to the game, one of the running gags on DeWitt's version was his attempt to finish a song if a game ended early and he had time to fill. For three years, the buzzer sounded repeatedly, cutting off George in the middle of a song. Finally, on the night he sang "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," his mother's favorite, he at last managed to navigate the entire number. The audience roared. At Game Show Congress 4, that performance---which survives on kinescope---was used as a closing musical montage in the video salute to Jack Narz, Tom Kennedy and Monty Hall.

The show sat on the shelf for 15 years until Ralph Edwards bought the rights in 1974. The plan was to bring it back in weekly syndication in those early evening slots opened up by the old Prime Time Access Rule. Kennedy, who had served as announcer on Edwards' ABC show About Faces in the early '60s, received a call one morning. Edwards said: "Tom, we're going to bring back Name That Tune and we want you to be the host." As Tom told me in an interview seven years ago: "I can't think of a single person who wouldn't want to work for Ralph Edwards." Kennedy became actively involved in the development of the new format. A few of the proposed games-within-the-game Kennedy saw would be unworkable with the audience and they were rejected. He told me he was happy with what ultimately hit the air except for one element: he was never comfortable with the Money Tree game which saw contestants pulling dollar bills off Christmas trees until their opponent could name a tune. Said Tom: "That just looked like pure greed and I didn't like it."

NBC took out an option on the show for a five-day-a-week version to launch three months ahead of the nighttime syndicated edition. With Kennedy busy doing Split Second on ABC, NBC's then-daytime chief Lin Bolen opted for a veteran in Dennis James to do the 10 a.m. Tune. Lin told me a few months ago in some e-mail exchanges she always liked the game but it never had a chance. "The biggest problem we had was we canceled Dinah Shore's morning show after four years and Dinah had a lot of loyal viewers," said Bolen. "The research showed Dinah's show was skewing old and it had been losing audience for more than a year against Joker's Wild. But Dinah's viewers were extremely loyal and when we canceled her, they were so angry, they would not have given any show a chance as a replacement." Lin also agreed with my own assessment that Name That Tune was better suited as a weekly show, rather than in a daily version because of how much musical material was required for five shows a week. "The audience was largely over 50 in the early morning, so we emphasized older music and that meant we repeated a lot of material," she said. The daytime Name That Tune was gone in half a year. Three years later, when another noontime version was attempted with Kennedy, the same result ensued.

However, nighttime Name That Tune was the same hit as it was in the fifties. For its first five years in syndication, the Kennedy version was consistently in the top eight in the Nielsens among first-run off-network shows. In 1979, the ABC-owned stations and a number of other locals across the U.S. added a second night of Tune. However, the addition of a rock band and more of a disco sound in an attempt to hook younger viewers actually hastened the show's end in 1981. Kennedy, for his part, was grateful for the seven-year run. "It cemented my identity in this business," he said in an earlier interview with TVgameshows.net. "To this day, I'll have people stop me and say, 'Hey, Tom, I can name that tune in seven notes!'" For me personally, those seven years were an ultimate: my favorite game show ever hosted by my personal favorite host of all-time. As a lifelong enthusiast of the genre, it simply doesn't get much better than that.

In my opinion, the show reached a peak when it became The $100,000 Name That Tune in 1976. A contestant who won the $15,000 Golden Medley returned the following week to enter an isolation booth and a chance at one difficult tune for $100,000. I still get chills watching Karen Rockman go into that booth and identify "Dancing on the Ceiling." Tom was one of the best ever at building tension and drama as he milked every moment of describing the song's history, it's composer, the lyricist and when it was first released before erupting with the title. In my book, the change to a competitive Golden Medley Showdown for 100 grand was never as exciting because too often, one quick-triggered player could run away with the bonus game.

Sandy Frank, who distributed the show for Edwards, bought the production rights and revived Name That Tune yet again in 1984-85. Interestingly, Frank or his publicity people teased three names as agreeing to host the show: Kennedy, Peter Marshall and Mike Douglas. I never talked to Douglas before he died but Tom and Peter have both told me they were never approached. Jim Lange was the choice and he did a competent job. The problem was twofold: again, the five-a-week format forced Tommy Oliver's orchestra into repeating too many songs too frequently. Likewise, the show was slotted in many markets opposite Wheel of Fortune just as Merv Griffin's game was surprisingly skyrocketing to the top of syndication in its second season. By the end of the February sweeps, the numbers sank with the speed of the "William Tell Overture." Frank could not sell enough stations on a second year.

A pilot for an updated version was shot with singer Peter Allen as host in 1988 but that one came just as the game show business was headed for a major recession. The show again didn't sell. At one point, in the early '90s, a report surfaced in trade publications that Name That Tune may return with Marilyn McCoo as host but the story was obviously a publicity plant.

In 2000, I interviewed bandleader Oliver---who died earlier this year---and he still believed in the format. "I really think with the right tweaking of the format, it could happen again," he told me. When I told him my ultimate vision was to have him lead a 15-piece orchestra in playing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It Any More," he laughed and reminded me his band played odd orchestrations for The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" and the memorable "(Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey) Kiss 'Em Goodbye." I suppose if Pat Boone could record a full brass band version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman," anything's possible.

Frank's attempt to soup up the show as Name That Video for VH1 five years ago was a mortal disaster. Some key industry insiders watched that one a few times and hated it. So did I. Not only was former veejay Karyn Bryant one of the coldest fishes ever to preside over a game show, the producers made so many of the same mistakes I've seen contemporary showrunners make. The contestants were all stripped of last names, so they were all interchangeable Joes, Heathers and Angies. So little time was spent finding out about their lives and interests, you forgot about them five minutes after the show was over. Besides, narrowing the focus to music videos sharply reduced the demographic interest in the show. Once the 50 episodes aired in five weeks, Name That Video was history.

The one thing I hope is that we are not being teased royally by CBS and headed for a major letdown. One remembers in 2000 when CBS made a major announcement and proceeded to develop a remake of The $64,000 Question as The $1,064,000 Question. Les Moonves ultimately declared the show looked too much like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and scuttled it.

If Name That Tune does earn a slot on the CBS schedule early next year, it still could fizzle. Everything will ride on the execution. Yet, the show has two producers who mounted a beautiful Andy Griffith Show Reunion a couple of years ago that went through the roof in the ratings. They have a solid track record on their other television work. What they have described as their vision for Name That Tune indicates to me they intend to do this one right with a balance between the classics and the contemporaries. Plus, they have picked the ideal emcee in Osmond.

Let's just declare our hope CBS will stop short of attempting to insert Pink's "You Make Me Sick" or the all-time longest-running song in the history of the Billboard charts, the immortal "Whoomp! There It Is." I'll take Rod Stewart gravelling his way through "The Way You Look Tonight" any day before those. And that's the name of that tune!