Q:  Why are the ABC Password shows never shown on Game Show Network?

A:  This is one of our most perpetually asked questions and it is frustrating that those shows are apparently gone.  The ABC version is one of the few shows of any kind in which Mark Goodson did not insist on archived copies.  The cost would still have been expensive to save them all because television was still using bulky, two-inch videotape in those years and kinescopes were virtually dead.

Yet, Goodson managed to save the color editions of the CBS daytime version of Password and nearly all of the nighttime shows.

ABC, largely a bare-bones network until it became number one in prime time in 1976, archived almost nothing because of those costly $300-a-tape spindles.

Sadly, so many of television's top names of that era played on that version before the level of celebrity players declined.  Elizabeth Montgomery, Bill Bixby, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Martin Milner, Greg Morris, Kate Jackson, Tony Randall, Robert Young and Mary Tyler Moore all appeared on the ABC version of Password.  Betty White became the first female substitute game show host in more than a dozen years on a week when Allen played the game.  Monty Hall hosted for a week when Allen and Betty challenged the other ABC game show hosts.

The only thing we're glad they don't have:  Password All-Stars, one of the worst mistakes in daytime history.

Q:  I seem to remember Video Village as a child but some people I work with think I'm crazy.  What was the game like?

A:  After seeing Merrill Heatter, its co-creator, at Game Show Congress, I will tell you he is pleased you aren't crazy.  Video Village made his company.  

The show, which aired from 1960-62, was a living board game as contestants traveled down three "city streets" in the "village."  They advanced via the roll of a dice in a chuck-a-luck cage.  The object was to amass money and prizes as one traveled along the village in a race to reach the finish line first.

One of the most inspired moves of jeopardy in the game was Exchange Place, the last square before the finish.  Hit that and you were forced to trade places with an opponent who may be way behind and often blow the game.  You did keep all of your loot, even if you lost.

Only two kinescopes and one clean copy of a videotape appear to have survived, one with Jack Narz, one with substitute host Red Rowe and one with Monty Hall.

Q:  The recent A&E Biography on game shows did not mention a word about Bill Cullen.  Why?

A:  Nor did it mention a thing about Allen Ludden.  You had a couple of stills of Allen but no discussion of him.  

We're pleased they used Tom Kennedy, Monty Hall, Wink Martindale, Peter Marshall, Alex Trebek, Bob Eubanks, Betty White----so many of the great classic hosts.  

Yet, at Game Show Congress, Peter himself called it "a travesty" that Bill, arguably the greatest emcee ever, was ignored.

Our guess is that this special was produced by a documentary company run by young producers who don't have a clue who Bill was.  Often, the surmisal is:  "If we don't know who he is, the audience surely won't."  

That was an embarrassing oversight and A&E should be ashamed.  However, that mistake will likely not be repeated on one of the upcoming GSN documentaries on game shows.  We were told by two of the producers the unanimous consensus was of Bill as the best of all time and we're virtually assured a generous focus on Cullen will be on one of those specials.

Q:  When is the change going to happen with Richard Karn on Family Feud?

A:  In mid-September, when the show returns for an eighth season.  That's when John O'Hurley will replace Karn.

Q:  Do you think with its renewed emphasis on game shows that GSN will ever run Groucho's You Bet Your Life as you have suggested?

A:  Sadly, no.  We still think it would be a solid alternative for weekend late night and it would not be terribly expensive.  Paul Brownstein Productions holds the syndication rights.

Yet, our surmisal is GSN would not buy anything in black-and-white (and probably wouldn't air the late night monochrome shows it has now, were it not for their celebrity nostalgia value).  Seeing Groucho again, in our view, would be an outstanding exception but I'm not optimistic Rich Cronin would even look in that direction.

Q:  Was that the Rich Cronin of GSN we saw last week on Password Plus?

A:  It absolutely was.  Rich was a college student at the time, hoping to earn a little extra money.  He had no idea at the time his future would include originating TV Land and guiding the fortunes of Fox Family Channel and Game Show Network.

Q:  Do you think GSN will ever go back to calling itself Game Show Network?

A:  Probably not and it's a shame.  The decision on a name change was made when GSN appeared to be headed diametrically opposite from the game show business and was commissioning everything from casino shows to game operas and buying recent network offerings from The Mole to The Next Action Star to Star Search to the dreadfully juvenile Kenny vs. Spenny.  

Our question, and we have shared this with some of GSN's marketing personnel:  do you know of 10 people who really and truly go around calling that channel GSN---The Network for Games?  To most people, it's still Game Show Network and it always will be, no matter how they try to market it.

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The three most promoted shows of the 1964 fall season on WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla., were reruns of Leave It to Beaver, The Lloyd Thaxton Show and The Mike Douglas Show.

For the kids, the arrival of Beaver was a big event because the last two years of the Cleavers' adventures never aired in Jacksonville. We had no clue who either Mike or Lloyd were but they may as well have been household words by their premiere dates.

I missed the first three days of The Beav and Mike. I was on the south side of 10 days in the hospital, recovering from a severe grade of pneumonia. I was not told until years later my survival was considered touch-and-go for a 48-hour period. My frustration: no TV in my room and missing my friends at school.

Finally, on Sept. 10, I was home and after seeing Beaver, Miss Landers, Larry and Whitey and the gang, I stuck around for this Mike Douglas guy. What else was I going to do? I could only get one channel and I was still on enforced bedrest.

This Douglas came out to the theme music of "Together Wherever We Go." He sang "My Kind of Town" to open the show. Then, he trotted out a co-host. I'd heard of guests before but never a co-host. I learned early on this woman had been on the entire week. She dated back to the Golden Age of Hollywood but I'd never seen her before. Mike's co-host was Gloria Swanson.

I remember Mike was pleasant to everyone on a set which seemed to have a lot of asterisks on the wall (The Dating Game on ABC would emulate the same design the following year). Mike and his guests were seated in a semicircle, rather than in the traditional desk-and-sofa setup on Johnny Carson's show. Once the hour ended and WJXT's Newsnight began, I was satisfied enough to want to tune in the next day. I did many, many more times.

Within a few weeks, I felt as if I knew who this Mike Douglas was. He gave me the impression he was talking just to me, rather than a big mass audience. I liked the way he sang. I enjoyed when he went out into the audience. I laughed when he laughed at himself, which was frequently. Probably no one on television was any more self-deprecating until Chuck Woolery came along.

Mike actually had game show people on his show. Betsy Palmer of I've Got a Secret was his co-host for a week. Allen Ludden appeared and sang "Our Love Is Here to Stay." Bud Collyer came on to plug the Miss Teenage America Pageant. At various times, the entire panel of To Tell the Truth visited with Mike. Joe Garagiola sang a duet of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" with Barbara Walters. Hugh Downs actually played the piano. Tom Kennedy came on to play Name That Tune with Mike and Bernadette Peters. On Mike's show, Henry Morgan once told Pernell Roberts, "I've heard for months how you felt you weren't professionally fulfilled. But Bonanza gave you exposure and made you a good living. Just one time, I'd like to hear you say, 'Thank you, Bonanza.'" Finally, the future Trapper John, M.D., said: "Well, okay. Thank you, Bonanza."

I remember even into the late '70s being told by WJXT's news director, when I was under consideration for a job there, "You don't tamper with Douglas in Jacksonville." By that time, Mike had long since expanded in The Gateway City to his full 90 minutes. From 4:30 to 6, Mike owned South Georgia and North Florida. His 53 percent share of the audience killed scores of opposing shows, including my future friend Tom Kennedy's. That delivered enough of an audience to give WJXT's Eyewitness News shares in the 60s.

Mike was the first daytime performer ever to win an Emmy. In 1967, he was recognized at a banquet table during the prime time Emmys as Outstanding Daytime Performer. His opposition: Kennedy and Gene Rayburn. Tom didn't even go to the awards---not because he didn't want to attend. His nomination notice and invitation was sent to New York. You Don't Say! was taped in Hollywood. Tom had no idea he was nominated or lost until two weeks after the awards aired.

One of the most effective promotional campaigns for a syndicated show in the 1970s centered around the theme "Mike Makes Your Day." For millions of stay-at-home moms who delayed the start of supper to share their afternoons with Mike, he did make their day.

Mike brought a lot of women onto his show because he knew his audience would respond. Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields and Peggy Cass were among the comediennes whose careers swelled because of their appearances as Mike's co-host. Mike recognized the larger-than-life talents of a young Barbra Streisand, who appeared with him before she was discovered as a national institution.

Something was uniquely special about The Mike Douglas Show originating from Philadelphia. The locale was a refreshing change of pace from the glitz of New York or Hollywood.

When Mike hit the road, America felt as if it was going on a trip with him. He spent a week in San Francisco with Tennessee Ernie Ford. He went to Cypress Gardens for his first week in color. He came to Savannah, Ga., for two days to shoot his cameo as the governor in Burt Reynolds' movie "Gator." The Mike Douglas Show came along.

Mike showed up in 1971 in the house of the man who eventually displaced him as the king of daytime, Phil Donahue. He told Phil of how he once opened the show and totally forgot the lyrics to the day's first song. "There's nothing any more embarrassing or helpless than to be out there all alone and realize you don't have a lifeline," Mike said. That kind of travail happened rarely. When it did, it only made Mike appear more human to the rest of us.

In 1978, Mike was still on top but the landscape of daytime was changing. Donahue was finally making inroads with his audience-based, issues-driven talk show. Off-network sitcom reruns were more contemporary and drawing younger people. Group W, his distributor, pushed Mike into a decision he never should have made. Ostensibly, to compete for a hotter talent base of guests, he moved The Mike Douglas Show to Hollywood.

One of the qualities which endeared us to Mike for so many years was he was not Hollywood. He was a Midwest guy who retained his roots. He tried hard to maintain his persona in Los Angeles. He could get Bob Hope. He could attract a better grade of film and television actor. Yet, Mike's show took on the image of a guest in the wrong house. The charm of The Mike Douglas Show was that it was not in Hollywood. The show began to look like any other show originating from the West Coast....not The Mike Douglas Show which was a part of our lives.

The cruelties of broadcasting were never more evident than when Group W unceremoniously dumped Mike in 1980, only four weeks before the NATPE programming convention. Unbeknownst to Mike, the Westinghouse people had been negotiating with John Davidson for months as a replacement. Davidson had been a frequent guest and a previous co-host of Mike's. The two had a cordial relationship. No more. In Mike's 1983 book, "When the Going Gets Tough," he related how he learned he was being fired by a staff member, not from his bosses. The entire staff had already been gathered together and offered jobs for the forthcoming Davidson show. Mike had no idea until he received a phone call from a member of his production staff.

Miraculously, Mike held onto most of his staff and sold a re-packaged Mike Douglas Show to 160 stations in less than a month. He hung on for two more years. Forced to partner with a low-budget distributor and having to bankroll most of the production costs himself, Mike was forced into a transition to a weaker lineup of stations, many of which did not air him during the favored late afternoon time slots. The ratings took a dive.

In Chicago, WGN consigned the city's native son to 3 a.m. after Christmas 1981. A perennially caustic critic from the Chicago Sun-Times, Gary Deeb, regularly excoriated Mike. A small bandwagon joined Deeb in suggesting Mike was no longer relevant in television.

He attempted to institute drastic changes. Mike brought on a series of "contributing editors," including author Alex Haley, an exercise expert, a nutritionist and a marriage counselor----much as Oprah Winfrey does today with Gayle King, Bob Greene and earlier with Phil McGraw. The show's name was changed to The Mike Douglas Entertainment Hour. All of it was too late.

Mike finally gave up the battle in the spring of 1982 when too many stations refused to renew the show for a 22nd year. He took on a short stint as host of an entertainment talk show on the young CNN with a lot of ballyhoo but no budget and very little support from the Atlanta-based network. By early 1983, Mike was gone. With his departure came a wistfulness from those of us who grew from children to young adults during his years on the air. We wanted a chance to say a proper goodbye and never had the chance. Just as Johnny Carson did when he left The Tonight Show, when Mike left television, he really left.

I am not a particular fan of Rosie O'Donnell but I will always take my hat off to her for what she did during the first week of her talk/variety show in 1996. Rosie made a lot of public statements that she hoped her show would have the same flavor and feel as The Mike Douglas Show because that's what she grew up watching when she was a kid. Sure enough, she trotted out Mike to a huge roar from the audience. As the ovation finally died down, Mike said to Rosie: "They don't know who I am." That may have been true of the prompted live crowd. For those of us at home who knew of Mike's appearance, we wanted to say, "Oh, but we do know you, Mike. You've been a part of our families for more than 30 years." Mike sang "You Make Me Feel So Young" to Rosie as if he'd never been away from the bandstand. She put the icing on the cake when she told him, "You taught us all."

Ironically, I learned the news of Mike's death last Friday while listening to ESPN Radio as I was driving home. Dan (El Duque) Davis broke the news during his 2 o'clock sports update. Why ESPN? Davis mentioned how Mike introduced the child golfing prodigy Tiger Woods to the American audience with his father Earl in 1979.

Mike's gone now. He was one of those many special people who was a guest in my home thousands of times over three decades. He had a standing invitation to drop by for supper but he could never accept. He was more than just a singer or a typical talk show host. He literally changed the landscape of local and syndicated television forever in the early sixties. Most of all, he was our good friend, even though most of us never met him personally. That is the highest compliment I can offer him. As his promotional spots reminded us repeatedly, Mike made our day.