Q:  Did Bill Cullen ever do a game in prime time other than The Price Is Right and as a panelist on I've Got a Secret?

A:  Yes he did. Bill was a regular during one of the early years on the panel of The Name's the Same and was also a panelist on Who's There? However, his emcee work at night included Place the Face, the original Name That Tune, Bank on the Stars, the classic word game Down You Go and Quick as a Flash. His last prime time network stint was as host for a four-week CBS revival of I've Got a Secret in 1976. That one bombed: it was opposite Happy Days at the peak of its popularity.

Q:  Why did Bud Collyer not do the syndicated To Tell the Truth, since it was produced the year after it went off the network?

A:  Probably Bud was not tapped because of age, a rather lame but true excuse. He was 60 when the show was revived for syndication and no doubt pressure existed to give the show a younger look, though Garry Moore was 54 when he took over. As for the panel in 1969, Bill Cullen was 49, Peggy Cass 45, Orson Bean 41 and Kitty Carlisle either 59 or 62, depending on the source you believe. Also, Mark Goodson long had a close relationship and, at times, business partnership with Garry and after their many years together with I've Got a Secret, Goodson felt Garry's identity was stronger in launching a new Truth. The ultimate irony is Bud died suddenly on the very week To Tell the Truth returned in the nation's biggest markets. He had done a mystery guest slot on What's My Line? just a few months earlier but developed a sudden circulatory ailment which proved fatal. Bud was one of the most decent men who ever stepped behind a microphone.

Q:  I seem to vaguely remember a show called Picture This many years ago that was something like Win, Lose or Draw but not exactly like it. I told this to somebody and they said I was crazy. Can you help?

A:  You are absolutely not crazy at all. Your friend is. Picture This aired in the summer of 1963 on CBS. Jack Benny owned the show and it was his summer replacement. Ben Joelson and Art Baer created the game. The similarity to Win, Lose or Draw is not a figment of your imagination. The game pitted two celebrity-contestant teams against each other (a la Password). The twist was one team member was told the subject and instructed his or her how to draw it. One example: a porcupine. Alan King told his partner, "Draw an oval on that board. Now, make some long pick-up sticks come out of it....." The only thing you couldn't do was say the name of the subject. The host was Jerry Van Dyke, one of the finest comedy talents ever in television and one of the most miscast emcees ever on a game show.

Not living on the West Coast, I did not have the joy of seeing an abundance of the television work of Ralph Story. What I did see demonstrated the work of a brilliant communicator. His death last week only magnifies the memory of his work.

Story became the definitive host of one of the most infamous quiz shows of the scandal-laden era of the 1950s. If you saw the brilliant American Experience PBS documentary on the scandals in 1992, you know Story was tapped for The $64,000 Challenge because of the misfortune of its original host Sonny Fox.

Earning arguably the most coveted emcee job of 1956 in the spinoff of television's number one show, Fox lost his glibness and polish and stumbled over his own name on the debut. That started a spiral of bobbles from which Fox never recovered. CBS and sponsor Revlon chairman Charles Revson decided Sonny had to go.

Enter the smooth, confident, easygoing Story----who had the characteristics for Sunday nights which had made Hal March a major television star on Tuesday nights with The $64,000 Question. For a shade less than two years, he presided over everyone from spelling whiz Gloria Lockerman to a showdown over art between jockey Billy Pearson and actor Vincent Price. The dual isolation booth was alive with challenges for former Question champions.

From the time I was three, I saw virtually all of March's remaining Question shows. I only viewed two of Story's Challenge broadcasts when they actually aired. In those days, when ad agencies controlled network time slots, some sponsors opted not to purchase the entire lineup of a network's affiliate base. In Georgia, where I lived, everyone had access to The $64,000 Question. However, Revlon only bought the major urban CBS affiliates covering about 72 percent of the country for Challenge. WRBL in Columbus, Georgia, was not in that mix. We were saddled with a delayed broadcast of Frank Sinatra's unsuccessful ABC dramatic anthology show. Only on infrequent trips to my grandparents' house not far from Jacksonville could I see Ralph Story in action on Sunday nights. When I did, I liked him. Immensely.

Pleasant, charming, authoritative: all three were distinctive adjectives to describe Story. He was as comfortable with a shoemaker from Brooklyn as he was with bandleader Xavier Cugat. Unlike the shaky-if-congenial Fox, Story connected with the viewers. He made you feel as if he was talking to you directly for the course of the entire half-hour.

The only problem was the nefarious behind-the-scenes machinations of $64,000 Challenge producer Shirley Bernstein and her staff. With the pressures from Revlon to maintain the quiz's ratings, Bernstein supervised a system of question coaching and internal screening of contestants which probably placed Challenge in the same league as NBC's Twenty One and Tic Tac Dough and CBS's Dotto in show rigging. The entire process is well-documented in court and Congressional records and in two brilliant books by Kent Anderson and one of the lead attorneys for the 1958-59 federal grand jury investigation into the quiz shows, Joseph Stone.

Fortunately, as was the case for virtually all of the emcees aside from Jack Barry---who was also a co-owner/producer of Twenty One and Tic Tac Dough, Story was exonerated of any wrongdoing which could have killed his career. In television's pioneering days, the emcees usually showed up on the day of the show to read over questions and be cued for any production oddities on an episode. The actual producing was left to the staff. Many of the emcees took polygraph tests to prove their innocence.

After the Challenge debacle, Story never tackled another quiz show. He returned to local television in Los Angeles. Story's credibility did not take a hit with viewers despite his visual association with one of television's blackest hours. He was a perfect fit for CBS-owned KNXT's news. His vignettes on Los Angeles people and its history earned him multiple Emmys. Ralph Story's Los Angeles became a California legend. When KNXT opted to become one of the first stations in America to air an hour of early evening local news, the station turned to Ralph Story as its main anchor.

Eventually, he moved over to KABC and that gave those of us who admired his work on Question a chance to see him again, if only on occasion. From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, ABC offered a 15-minute late night weekend national newscast to its affiliates. The anchor role rotated between prime newscasters from the various ABC network-owned stations. Ralph Story was in that connection. Every few months, he would pop up on Saturday and Sunday nights to tell us what was happening around the world. He was always a welcome and credible face.

For a while, I thought Story was going to regain a permanent national role in 1975. When ABC decided to challenge NBC's Today with A.M. America, the two-hour morning show evolved into one of the network's most expensive debacles. Overly dependent on market research----even down to viewer perceptions of the news anchors using orange paper, A.M. was in trouble from the get-go. Its originally-named host, Bob Kennedy, died two months before the show premiered. WABC anchor Bill Beutel was quickly pressed into the role. Comedienne Stephanie Edwards, ostensibly signed as a more personable and humorous counterpart to Today's Barbara Walters, ended with an ill-defined role that left network suits frequently interfering. She left within five months. Peter Jennings was brought in from a decade of covering the Middle East to anchor the news segments. Jennings always appeared to be kept at a distance from the rest of the cast.

Story came into the picture when Beutel, sensing a quickly sinking ship, departed in mid-summer to return to Eyewitness News. Aside from Jennings, who stuck around to the bitter end in November, A.M. America had no regulars left and the show was a video Titanic. Everyone from Barbara Howar to Miss America to Bing Crosby's wife Kathryn was brought in to sub for Edwards.

In July, a pleasant surprise showed up at the host's desk of A.M. America----Ralph Story. He presided over the show for two weeks and, for once, ABC's morning effort had a sense of direction and purpose. Story's folksy approach brought a calmness to the chaos which plagued A.M. America from the cold January morning of its debut. He could ask a key political figure a serious question and turn around 10 minutes later and chat amiably with Kate Mulgrew about her new ABC soap Ryan's Hope.

Story got attention. Variety and TV Guide both praised his fresh air and easygoing persona. Momentum was building for Story to possibly take over A.M. America. Unfortunately, it was too late. ABC executives, who persisted in allowing the news consulting firm of Frank Magid and Associates to dictate too much of the show's fortunes, decided the image of A.M. was just too much of a failed brand. They wanted a retooled product.

Ralph was still not down for the count. ABC looked at a list of 20 possible candidates to take over the morning slot. Eventually the field was narrowed to three: Story, Richard Dawson---who was doing a short-term tryout morning show on WABC in New York---and a surprise contender, actor David Hartman (late of NBC's unsuccessful Lucas Tanner, which has rarely been seen or thought of since).

Dawson was ruled out because his format was considered too heavy on comedy and entertainment for early morning. Some New York and Los Angeles media analysts were almost sure the job was Story's. In the end, Hartman won the role and led the renamed Good Morning America through its first 11 years, overtaking Today in 1981.

Why not Story? Ultimately, television's obsession with demographics played the biggest role. Ralph Story was 60. ABC's brass decided while Story was a solid personality, they wanted someone younger to compete with Today's Jim Hartz (whose short stint is now only remembered in the trivia books). Hartman, a well-known name on several Universal dramatic series---including The Bold Ones, was that younger face.

I've thought many times how Ralph Story would probably have carried the early Good Morning America with smoothness and aplomb. Whether he would have been as successful as Hartman, we can only guess. ABC was a lot more patient with Hartman as the format evolved and he went through two co-hosts before Joan Lunden settled into a long run in the role.

The network's decision was again L.A.'s gain. Story finished out his final years in television with KABC. His Morning Show was the prototype for what ultimately became Regis and Kathie Lee after his retirement.

For broadcasting's sake, thank goodness Ralph Story was not held responsible for the unfortunate blunders of a sullied era in quiz shows. Otherwise, television would have been denied one of its most credible and competent communicators. He was a symbol of everything television ought to be.