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 rarely engage in an outright campaign to rally the troops for or against an individual show for a prime reason. Everyone has his or her own tastes and you are entitled to make your own decisions on viewing.

However, I will break that rule and encourage you to watch one of the showings, either Sunday or Tuesday, of The Real Match Game Story: Behind the Blank on GSN. For five years, we have advocated for GSN to attempt a series of documentaries focusing on the rich history of this genre. The Sports Century model which ESPN Classic did such a brilliant job of developing, as we saw it, was a perfect template.

For whatever reason, the specials did not surface, even though the two-hour special on the celebrated Paul Larson victory on Press Your Luck still stands as far and away the most-watched broadcast in the history of GSN. The network drifted in different directions: attempting casino shows, dodgeball and a series of documentaries which were largely sports-oriented but outside the niche of GSN.

This time, GSN has it right. Asylum Entertainment has a wealth of experience in the documentary genre with other cable networks. The Real Match Game and the forthcoming The Chuck Barris Story: My Life on the Edge are done with considerable loving care. They are entertaining, insightful, funny and honest.

Not all of the Match Game material was shot by Asylum. The show's producer Ira Skutch, as he reveals in our Cover Story this week, was not even aware he was included in it (and he is liberally). He did an interview for the Television Academy a few years ago. That conversation is invaluable during the broadcast its perspective as to the skyrocketing success of the game and its ultimate fall from the heights.

Talent coordinator Diane Janaver and some of the shows frequent visitors, Betty White and Marcia Wallace, offer insight into the building blocks of Match Game.

Later in the wee hours of Monday morning, one of the few surviving kinescopes of the original NBC series appears on GSN. Only people over 45 remember the immense success of the first Match Game. The show rose to the number one slot in the Nielsens several times, particularly during summers when kids and college students were home. The NBC edition was the first show which struck a serious blow to the perennial CBS favorite The Secret Storm. Yet, if you watch it, you realize why it had to be totally remade from scratch for the '70s. The original Match Game was a quiet show. No catchy incidental music while the celebrities and their civilian contestant partners wrote their answers. They actually raised their hands when they finished, a la grade school. While glimpses of the impish Gene Rayburn personality occasionally surface, Gene was saddled behind a podium (with no trademark telescoping mike) and was restricted from the across-the-set movement that was so prevalent a decade later. The bonus round was a three-question audience match which offered little tension or excitement. NBC actually was frightened when winning teams left the show with $1,000 or more----a nervousness left over from the era of the quiz scandals.

You'll see clips and stills from the original version liberally through the first half of the GSN documentary. What the mother edition had was the building block of many of Goodson-Todman's game shows of the '70s and '80s: the 100-person poll. A lot of what became Family Feud had its origins in that 1960s audience match segment. Card Sharks' question format followed the same lead. In the last two seasons of the daytime To Tell the Truth on CBS, 100 people in the studio audience voted along with the panel on the true identity of the central character.

The word, however, which sifts seamlessly through the documentary is chemistry. The show with the ideal host, panelists who meshed with their comic timing (until Richard Dawson became sullen after Feud became a hit, a subject which is confronted honestly during the hour) and an outrageous party atmosphere which was perfect for the mid-1970s in network late afternoon. Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly were not even on the agenda when the show was created. In fact, after she became a regular, Brett was not a popular commodity with viewers during her first year, largely because she made the celebrity mistake of frequently answering questions with the intent of being funny, rather than trying to match the contestant. The turning point came in the summer of 1974 when Gene read a sentence in a question, which ended with: "The celebrity who gives the worst answers on Match Game is _________." The contestant instantly said Brett and five of the six celebrities matched her. From that day forward, Brett began playing the game straight and letting the humor flow naturally from the repartee. In time, she became one of the most beloved panelists in the history of game shows. During the documentary, she makes an allusion as to why she was not asked back as a regular on the Ross Shafer ABC version in the 1990.

The ratings of Match Game from 1973 to 1976 (reaching the number one slot in the Nielsens after just 11 weeks on the air) were the highest in daytime television history at that time. Skutch offers a candid opinion that not just CBS's unfortunate move of the show to mornings was the beginning of the end of its network run. He believes the show had stretched the limits of acceptability in daytime TV after its first four years and could not stretch them further.

A poignant inclusion is Gene Rayburn's last interview, which agent Fred Wostbrock supervised only a short period before Gene's death in November 1999. The conversation has only been shown once, during a GSN Match Game end-of-the-year special several years ago. Rayburn became so identified with Match Game that many viewers were unaware of his other work. He was a successful New York radio personality before he transferred to television and earned notoriety as Steve Allen's announcer. For three years, his musical game Dough Re Mi was the anchor of NBC's morning lineup. Gene and his wife Helen both appeared on Broadway. The two of them toured in "Come Blow Your Horn" in the early sixties. He was also the first host of The Miss Universe Pageant before giving way to Jack Linkletter in 1964.

In the closing moments, the documentary details the three attempts to remake Match Game since its departure from syndication in 1982. All three were failures: one the misguided attempt to produce a hybrid with Hollywood Squares; another the Shafer edition which never found that magic word chemistry, particularly without Gene and with an over-reliance on D-list panelists; and the late '90s effort with Michael Burger which, despite Vicki Lawrence and the amusing George Hamilton appearing regularly, never caught fire.

One of the key reasons cited is one we've felt for nearly 25 years. Match Game is one of the few formats which was successful in its original incarnation, torn up and remade into something even better in its second try. That second try, nonetheless, was so good at its best that it became too imbedded in our minds. You need Gene Rayburn to host Match Game and Gene's gone. I haven't seen the next Gene Rayburn. Another Brett and Charles together? Try to find them. Though Bill Daily, McLean Stevenson, Dick Martin and an assortment of talented men gave their best shot on a rotating basis in the center of the lower tier, replacing Dawson was the equivalent of the original What's My Line?'s unsuccessful hunt to fill Dorothy Kilgallen's chair.

Sometimes, game shows should not be remade. In an unorthodox analogy, one can compare this to people who opt not to view a loved one or friend in a casket. The phrase, "I prefer to remember them the way the were," is frequently offered. The CBS Match Game was so ideal for what it was, it may be the show which cannot be duplicated. Perhaps we should not expect another try because the people probably do not exist who can match that moment in time.

I do implore you to watch Behind the Blank. GSN has committed to seven of these documentaries. The two I have already seen treat the subject matter with respect, dignity and straightforward honesty. If you support them, I guarantee more will come and too many good stories about the 60 years of this genre on television need to be told.