The Late Show With Joan Rivers was the first attempt by the then-new Fox Network to launch late night programming in competion with the seemingly-indestructible Johnny Carson. When Ms. Rivers crashed and burned, she disappeared suddenly from the show and was replaced by a couple of guest hosts while Fox scurried to come up with something else for the time slot. Just when Arsenio Hall began clicking as host of The Late Show, the new program was ready...and Arsenio fled elsewhere, becoming (for a time) a lot more successful than his replacement on Fox and giving Mr. Carson a brief, unprecedented dosage of competion.

The new Fox show was the Wilton North Report — which, like the earlier mock sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, drew its name from the geography near the studio. Ms. Hartman lived in Fernwood, a street which bordered the KTTV Studios. Wilton was another such street and it seemed like a dandy name to hang on a show of fake news. Similar in concept to the later, successful Daily Show on Comedy Central, the Wilton North Report didn't look like such a hot idea when it debuted. Its hosts, Phil Cowan and Paul Robins, were disc jockeys with little TV experience. The producer, Barry Sand, had plenty having once produced David Letterman's show in New York. The writing staff (which included a novice named Conan O'Brien) later faulted Sand for watering down the show and chopping out the best and most controversial moments.

The Wilton North Report debuted December 11, 1987. It was gone less than four weeks later but its ticket remains.

In 1973, CBS tried to compete with the popular afternoon talk show then hosted by Mike Douglas. Their candidate to take on Mike? Vin Scully, then (as now) the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers...a man often called the best sportscaster in the business.

Scully was much-loved in Southern California and a seasoned broadcaster. The only argument against him as the host of such a show was that when summer rolled around, he'd be off calling play-by-play and unavailable to tape shows on a daily basis. Reportedly, the folks at CBS thought he was such a good candidate for the post that they decided not to let a little thing like that dissuade them. The show went on the air in January of '73 (January 15 to be exact) and the thought was that they'd worry about conflicts in Mr. Scully's schedule later.

As it turned out, it wasn't necessary. Scully's show only lasted thirteen weeks, exiting the CBS daytime lineup on March 23 with new game shows taking over the time slot. The Old Redhead, as some called Scully, wasn't all that comfy interviewing folks who didn't have a good fastball. When sports figures came on, he was fine. With comedians and movie stars? Not so fine. So Vin scurried back to the broadcast booth and the show was quickly forgotten.

Quiz Kids was a radio show that lasted an amazingly long time when you consider that people really don't like to listen to smart children. But that's what it was all about: A quiz program with a panel of very bright kids who often seemed more intelligent than most of the adult viewership.

The radio version debuted in 1940, broadcast from Chicago, and continued until 1953. The TV version started in 1949 and lasted until 1956. Both versions were on and off the air multiple times and even changed networks at least once, and the host was changed several times. It was often used as a replacement show, either as a summer replacement or as a quick substitute for something that had to be cancelled in a hurry.

The kids, of course, changed from season to season. The original rules gave sixteen as the maximum age but at times, the producers would decide that younger contestants were more interesting and they'd "retire" a player well before his or her birthday.

The above ticket is from 1956, near the end of the show's TV run. By this point, it was on Thursday evenings at 10:30 PM, requiring the kids to stay up pretty late. The host then was Clifton Fadiman, a literary figure who gained great prominence in the forties for hosting or occasionally appearing on the panels of game shows. His biggest hit on radio, which he emceed, was Information Please, one of those quiz programs where you really had to know something in order to win. On TV, he hosted many shows but the most popular was This is Show Business.

Quiz Kids was revived several times after, including a 1978 version hosted by Jim McKrell, a 1981 version hosted by Norman Lear and a 1990 version hosted by Jonathan Prince.

There have been quite a few programs called The Dick Cavett Show but with the exception of one ill-fated attempt at variety, they were all pretty much the same: Cavett sitting around, talking to interesting people. Cavett had previously worked as a writer for both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, and he seemed to have absorbed the better qualities of each without the worst. He had Paar's love of conversation but not the same penchant for feuds and self-pity, and he had Carson's comic instincts without the occasional leering qualities. On the downside, he sometimes had an "I'm smarter than you" attitude that alienated some viewers and there was often the subtext of, "Look at all the famous people I hang out with." Neither was fatal and on the whole, Mr. Cavett did a very fine show.

It's unfortunately lumped in with the long list of talk shows that tried to compete with Johnny and failed, and some of the articles about Cavett make it sound like he was in and out of the time slot in thirteen weeks or less. He was actually on for almost five years which, given how highly competitive it was to be on then at 11:30, is quite an accomplishment. The show was also critically-acclaimed and won awards at a time when that could be said of very little on ABC.

In 1973, ABC was enjoying some ratings success in prime-time and the execs there became infatuated with the idea that they could also win in late night. They began monkeying with the 11:30 slot, moving Cavett into a rotating format that performed worse than what it replaced. The other main component of this round-robin was Jack Paar Tonite, which failed and took Cavett's show with it, which was our loss. Cavett went on to other, similar shows in other venues.

The above ticket says the show was done from something called TV-15. It was one of those theaters in New York that changed names and functions from year to year. It started life as the John Golden Theater in 1926 and was the Elysee the last time it housed plays. Dozens of different TV shows (including one of Merv Griffin's) were done there in the fifties and sixties. Not long after Cavett vacated, it was turned into a church (which it had been occasionally before) and it was finally demolished in 1985.

Another in the endless series of game shows hosted by Bill Cullen, The Love Experts was an awkward attempt to combine a game show with a talk/advice show. In each episode, three contestants would appear — one after the other — to talk about their romantic problems and to seek advice from that day's panel of four celebrities. The expertise was a little dicey. Even assuming you'd want to talk about your love life on national TV, would you want counsel from Joanne Worley? Soupy Sales? Elaine Joyce? Nipsey Russell? Peter Lawford? At least some of those people should have been seeking advice instead of giving it.

As you can see from the above ticket, even David Letterman was one of the alleged experts. This was from a brief period when Mr. Letterman was making the rounds of game shows, usually acting like he didn't want to be there, wherever he was. I suspect his advice to the lovelorn, even if he didn't express it on the air, was to not seek advice from people like himself.

Producer Bob Stewart had previously taped and been unable to sell a pilot of this show hosted by Jack Cassidy...and hey, there's a guy who didn't have a single problem in his love life. When Cullen was brought in, he was doing double-shifts, simultaneously hosting The $25,000 Pyramid, also produced by Stewart. Bill did his best to keep the proceedings moving, and the show actually lasted a whole year in syndication (September of '78 through September of '79) though it didn't air in many of the major markets. The "game" part came at the end when the celebs would vote to award a big prize to the person who had the most interesting story, which generally meant the most pathetic one. My main recollection of the program is that the romantic problems that the contestants offered up sounded phony and contrived. If they weren't fabricated by the show's producers, they were probably phonied up by the contestants hoping to win the big prize.

In 1976, CBS revived the long-running game show I've Got A Secret for what turned out to be a short-running "filler" in their schedule. Bill Cullen, who'd been a panelist on the first version, moved over to the host's chair. Henry Morgan, who'd also been a panelist on the original version, returned to his old chair and he was joined by Richard Dawson, Elaine Joyce and New York entertainment reporter Pat Collins. In format, it was identical to I've Got A Secret as hosted by Garry Moore but the longevity was not there. The Cullen version lasted but six weeks and since it was on opposite Happy Days at the peak of that show's popularity, almost no one tuned in or even knew it was on.

Cullen was, of course, a fine host...probably the best choice they could have made since Garry Moore, who was then hosting the daytime To Tell The Truth, declined the post. (Not long afterwards, Moore retired completely from television.) On the old show, Cullen and Morgan had occasionally filled in for Moore but neither had gotten the position when ol' Garry left that version. Morgan, it was felt, was better suited to be a panelist where his acerbic remarks — which occasionally suggested that something on the show was stupid — were more appropriate. Cullen was, of course, a great host but at the time of Moore's departure from the original show, Bill was also hosting The Price is Right on ABC. That network didn't mind him continuing as a panelist on a rival web's show but discouraged him hosting over there...so Steve Allen took over I've Got A Secret.

There had also been another problem with having Cullen take over for Moore. It was a poorly-kept secret that Bill Cullen, star of countless TV programs, had a bad limp, the result of a childhood bout with polio. He didn't demand that it never be mentioned (although some articles and bios did blame it on an auto accident) but suggested that no special attention be called to it, and that, of course, he not be placed in situations where he'd have to stand or walk a lot on camera. The shows he did were generally designed to accommodate this. He would usually not make an entrance at the beginning of the show or if he did, it would only be a step or two. If he had to walk — as he did when he entered as a panelist on the Moore-hosted To Tell The Truth — the director would cut around the action as much as possible so as to not show Cullen limping about the stage.

The producers of the original I've Got A Secret used Cullen once or twice as a fill-in host when Moore was away but it was not satisfactory. The nature of the show, with stunts and demonstrations of various contestants' secrets, demanded a host who could work on his feet. When the '76 version of the show came about though, it seemed more important to try and recapture the spirit of the earlier series so they decided to have Cullen preside even if that meant limiting the physical segments. It probably seemed like a good trade-off but in the end, it really didn't matter. Nobody was watching.

Thanks to Kenneth Johannessen for the ticket scan.

Tic-Tac-Dough had a long, checkered history. Produced and originally hosted by Jack Barry, it debuted on NBC daytime on July 30, 1956. Barry was busy with his company's prime-time hit and he eventually handed hosting chores off to Gene Rayburn. Announcing Legend Bill Wendell was the announcer and when Rayburn moved on in 1958, Wendell took over as host, continuing until this run of the show did its final broadcast on October 23, 1959. A prime-time version, hosted by Jay Jackson and later by Win Elliot, ran from September 12, 1957 until December 29, 1958.

What killed Tic-Tac-Dough was the scandal that Barry and his line producer, Dan Enright, were rigging their shows. Most of the outrage was over their other prime-time series, Twenty-One, but there was plenty of evidence that the outcome of many a game of Tic-Tac-Dough was prearranged. In particular, a Tic-Tac-Dough contestant named Kirsten Falke was subpeonaed by a government investigation and she admitted that one of the show's producers, Howard Felsher, coached her on how to win and gave her answers in advance. The prime-time version was yanked off the air but NBC attempted to keep the daytime version around for a time, swearing that it had been cleaned up and was now on the level. It may have been but audiences stopped watching. Perhaps they didn't believe that the show was now honest or maybe it just reminded them how they'd been deceived.

But that was not the end of Tic-Tac-Dough. It came back in a daytime version on CBS in 1978 and when that was cancelled, it shifted to syndication where it had a long and healthy run from 1978 through 1986. It then came back again for a brief run in 1990.

How did one play Tic-Tac-Dough? Simple. Two contestants competed, one designated as "X" and one designated as "O," just as in tic-tac-toe. Each of the nine boxes on a tic-tac-toe grid had a category assigned to it and a player could "win" that box by correctly answering a question in that category. Get three in a row and you win. It was very simple, which perhaps explains the game's long run.

Lucille Ball's third sitcom, Here's Lucy, debuted on September 23, 1968, a full six months after her previous series, The Lucy Show, had left the network. One might wonder why the change since her new character, Lucy Carter, wasn't all that different from her character on The Lucy Show, Lucy Carmichael, and both had Gale Gordon playing the "foil" in her life. Mr. Gordon's character didn't change a lot, either, nor did the show's Monday night time slot. Depending on who you asked, you could get any number of reasons for the conversion...

The old format was tired. After 156 episodes, Lucy needed some sort of change in her show, however minor.

Lucy wanted to work with her kids, Lucie and Desi Jr. Rather than find an awkward way to insert those characters into the life of Lucy Carmichael (which would mean they would not play her children), it was easier to change Lucy to Lucy Carter and just make them that character's offspring.

Starting a new show would mean that the old show would be freed up for unrestricted syndication and money could be made off those 156 episodes.

Lucy had owned The Lucy Show by virtue of her ownership of Desilu Studios, the company that produced it. In 1967, she sold Desilu to Gulf+Western, the conglomerate which the year before had acquired Paramount Pictures. Lucy didn't want to keep doing a TV show in which she had no ownership position so she ended The Lucy Show and started a new show which could be owned by her new company, which was co-owned by Gary Morton. Here's Lucy was produced by Lucille Ball Productions.

And there may have been other reasons as well, but all of the above were probably valid to some extent. How was the new show? About the same as the old show. It had memorable times, like the 1970 episode which guested Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. It had poorer moments, like most of the 1972-1973 season wherein Lucy Carter was in a wheelchair owing to the real Lucy's leg fracture from a skiing accident. Ms. Ball's physical comedy was scaled back after that, even after the cast was removed. (They probably would have had to do that even if she hadn't fractured her leg. Lucy was 61 years old in 1972, a bit aged to be doing some of the things she'd been doing...including skiing when she wasn't performing.)

Even though Lucy no longer owned the place, Here's Lucy filmed on the Paramount lot, and the filmings were said to be a love fest to her, with Lucy-loving audiences. Gary Morton often did the warm-ups and gave her the full star treatment, and guest stars abounded. All of Lucy's old pals — Jack Benny, George Burns, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett, et al (even Vivian Vance) — dropped by one or more times. In addition to her kids and Gordon, she was joined in the cast by Mary Jane Croft, who filled Vance's old function of playing Lucy's best friend.

The show had good ratings throughout its run and its cancellation (the last one aired March 18, 1974) was met with some controversy. Prime-time TV, especially on CBS, had changed with the coming of shows like All in the Family, M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and others that were believed to attract a younger, hipper viewership. Lucy's act, which hadn't changed much since the days of I Love Lucy, didn't seem to fit in. Her "retirement" from weekly television after nearly 23 years was announced as her idea but it was rumored that CBS had the idea first, and that an attempt to place the series with another network had failed. Lucy went on to do guest appearances and specials and even made one return to the world of the weekly sitcom — Life With Lucy in 1986.

For several years on radio, Lucille Ball had a successful series called My Favorite Husband, in which Richard Denning played her hubby, a banker. In 1951, a lot of radio shows were being converted to TV programs and My Favorite Husband, because of Ms. Ball's flair for physical comedy, seemed like a natural. But when the subject was raised with Lucy, she startled everyone by insisting that her real husband, Desi Arnaz, play her spouse in the TV show. This was because she felt it might save a troubled marriage if the two of them were together more often...and it did, but only for a while.

But there was another bonus for the Arnaz couple. Desi couldn't play a banker. He could barely play what he was...a Cuban bandleader. So bringing in Desi meant abandoning the My Favorite Husband format and creating something new. Which meant that Lucy and Desi could own the new show...which they did, starting a TV empire called Desilu. And so they became Lucy and Ricky Ricardo...and very wealthy.

There are many books out about I Love Lucy, the most often-rerun show in television history. They tell of how Desi (or more likely and accurately, his producers) invented the "three-camera" technique for filming a sitcom like a play; of how Desi became work-obsessive running the studio and that eventually harmed their marriage; of how William Frawley and Vivian Vance were so perfect as the landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz, but hated each other. You can read all that stuff elsewhere.

The above ticket is for a filming on October 21, 1954. This was for an episode called "Getting Ready," which was about preparations for the Ricardos and the Mertzes to go to Hollywood so Ricky could make his motion picture debut. The finished episode aired on December 13.

The first episode of I Love Lucy aired on October 15, 1951 and the last one aired on May 6, 1957. These were followed by many Lucy-Desi hour long specials, and of course Lucy went on to star in three other series: The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy.

The Lennon Sisters were four toothy young ladies — Dianne, Peggy, Kathy and Janet — who became famous singing on The Lawrence Welk Show. How they got on that series is one of the simplest "rocket to stardom" stories in the history of show business. Lawrence Welk's son Larry went to school with them and told his father about these sisters who were such fine vocalists. The elder Welk auditioned them and quickly added them to his "musical family," which meant they got a lot of television exposure but not the highest paychecks.

They appeared on the Welk show from 1955 to 1968 when they decided it was time to do bigger, better-paying jobs. They'd had several successful record albums and this prompted ABC to star them in a special with special guest Jimmy Durante. (That was how Jimmy always spelled it despite the type on the above ticket.) The special did well enough to lead to a weekly series that began in September of 1969. It was called Jimmy Durante Presents The Lennon Sisters Hour.

The series began on a sad note: Six weeks before debut date, the father of the Lennon Sisters was shot to death in a parking lot. The shooter was a deranged fan who believed he was married to Peggy Lennon, and that the father was attempting to break them up. Perhaps that contributed to the low entertainment value of the series, which was cancelled in mid-season.

Hullabaloo was a prime-time series on NBC that showcased recording artists of the day. It debuted as an hour series on Tuesday, January 12, 1965 and was later shifted to Monday nights as a half-hour series. It lasted in the Monday slot until August 29, 1966.

Each week, a different guest host would be front and center, introducing that week's acts and performing with the Hullabaloo dancers, a troupe of well-scrubbed, energetic young people. Future Broadway legends Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie were among those who did The Frug and The Monkey, but most of the attention went to a particularly uninhibited young lady named Lada Edmund, Jr. The rumor was that in college dorms across the country, male students would gather and watch Ms. Edmund gyrate with the sound on the TV turned off.

The guest list of Hullabaloo was an odd mix of rock performers and mainstream TV personalities. The show booked The Rolling Stones, The Moody Blues and The Yardbirds, but it also booked Don Adams, Soupy Sales, Michael Landon and Vicki Carr. Gary Lewis and the Playboys seemed to pop up every other week. Brian Epstein, who was famous as the manager of The Beatles, consulted and sometimes introduced British acts...but apart from a few snippets of tape, the Beatles themselves were absent from the program.

Some episodes of Hullabaloo were taped at Radio City in New York but by the date on the above ticket, they'd been exiled to the NBC facility in Brooklyn. Rumor has it that this was because of the teenagers who were lining up the night before to be in the audience for the tapings, and cluttering the sidewalks and hallways.

The original version of The Price is Right was a big hit, owing mainly to the twinkling hostmanship of emcee Bill Cullen. It was basically a giveaway show: Four contestants, apparently chosen primarily for their excitability, would "bid" on various items, trying to guess the manufacturer's suggested retail price. The one who got the closest without going over would win the item plus (usually) an array of bonus prizes.

The show had three main appeals. One was that you at home could play along, seeing how close you could come to guesstimating the prices. The second appeal was watching the winners going through fits of ecstasy and hysteria to score a free refrigerator or trip to the Bahamas. And the third appeal was Cullen, who was easily one of the cleverest, most congenial hosts to ever preside over a game show.

William Lawrence Cullen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1920 and broke into radio there during his teen years. By 1946, he was the host of the radio game show, Winner Take All, starting an amazing run of game show jobs both as host and panelist. On radio and television, the list included Act It Out, I've Got a Secret, Bank on the Stars, Professor Yes 'n' No, The Joker's Wild, Sports Cavalcade, Blankety Blanks, The Love Experts, The $25,000 Pyramid, Blockbusters, Three on a Match, Chain Reaction, Meet Your Match, To Tell The Truth, Child's Play, Name That Tune, Where Was I?, Down You Go, The Name's The Same, Who's There?, Eye Guess, Why?, Give and Take, Hot Potato, Pass the Buck, Winning Streak, How Do You Like Your Eggs?, Place the Face and You're Putting Me On.

The Cullen version of The Price is Right aired on NBC in daytime from 1956 until 1963, then shifted to ABC where it lasted until 1965. A weekly prime-time version aired from 1957 until 1964, also traversing both networks. As you can see from the above tickets, they moved around. The first ticket is for the Ziegfeld Theater, which NBC acquired in 1955. It had previously housed musicals including the original Kiss Me Kate and Show Boat. (The last legit offering there was an original musical by Lumpy Brannan, who went on to portray Mr. Green Jeans on the Captain Kangaroo TV show.) A few years before NBC sold the theater and it reverted to Broadway fare, The Price is Right moved to the Colonial and then when the show migrated to ABC, to the Ritz, which is now known as the Walter Kerr Theater.

In 1972, the production company (Goodson-Todman) decided to try and revive The Price is Right. It only took a few run-throughs for Mark Goodson to decide that the format was hopelessly outdated and that a major facelift was in order. The game that had been the core of the Cullen version was pared down to a quick pricing round, via which audience contestants earned the right to come up on stage and play the real game. And the rest is history...

Lorne Michaels left his role as Executive Producer of Saturday Night Live in 1980. In 1984, NBC was in such ratings trouble in prime time that they made him one of those offers he couldn't refuse. Reportedly, they dangled a staggering sum of cash and total freedom to do whatever he wanted with an hour on Friday nights. The problem, as many would later comment, was that Lorne Michaels didn't have an idea for a new show, nor the time to conceive one. The New Show debuted on January 6, 1984 and was instantly labelled "Saturday Night Lite" by most critics. It was a largely unstructured hour of sketches and musical acts that was at its best when it most closely resembled the series that had made Michaels famous, offering much the same look and feel, although the show was not broadcast live. It also featured many of the same cast members and guest stars, along with several refugees from SCTV. The last episode aired on March 23. Many people have fond memories of certain sketches, especially several that featured Steve Martin, but Michaels has so far refused to release the series on DVD.

The monologues of acclaimed stand-up comic Bob Newhart usually involved him playing straight man to an unheard voice on an imaginary telephone. He'd be the perfectly sane, calm guy trying to make sense out of what someone was telling him. That's why it was a brilliant idea on the part of series creators Lorenzo Music and David Davis to make him a psychologist in a situation comedy, surrounded him with eccentric characters. The joke, of course, was that Dr. Robert Hartley (his role) had just as much trouble managing his life as his patients did handling theirs. In fact, Dr. Hartley often had to seek advice from his wife Emily (played by Suzanne Pleshette) or an orthodontist friend (played by Peter Bonerz).

The Bob Newhart Show wasn't Newhart's first series. He'd previously starred in two variety shows — The Bob Newhart Show (1961) and The Entertainers (1964), neither of which succeeded, though the first did have the dubious honor of winning an Emmy after its cancellation. Both were quickly forgotten, not only by the public but by Newhart, who later spoke of his 1972 series as if it was his first series. (In his 2006 autobiography, I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This, he mentioned The Entertainers in passing and didn't mention the first series at all.)

This was understandable since the '72 show was a monster hit, and not just because of its great time slot. It followed The Mary Tyler Moore Show (from the same production company) on Saturday nights but quickly developed its own loyal following. It fared particularly well in reruns, attesting to its strength.

The series was on for six years. Newhart has explained that he wanted to end it after Year Five but was politely informed by CBS that if he walked out on his contract, they would sue him for their expected profit for Year Six. As this amount was tens of millions of dollars, Bob decided that a sixth season wasn't such as bad idea, after all.

Bill Cullen hosted oodles of game shows, some of which lasted for years. Pass the Buck was one of his biggest flops, debuting on CBS in April of 1978 and disappearing thirteen weeks later.

Here's how it worked: Four players competed, answering questions that had multiple answers like, "Name a U.S. president who served two terms" or "Name a flavor of ice cream sold at Baskin-Robbins." If the first player gave an acceptable answer, as determined by the program's judges, $25 was added to the bank and the play passed to the second player. If the second player took too long or gave an unacceptable answer, he or she would be eliminated if the next player answered correctly. Eventually, three of the four players would be eliminated and the remaining player would win all the money then in the bank and a chance at the bonus round which no one seemed to understand.

The producers kept fiddling with the rules, especially with that bonus round, but time ran out for Pass the Buck before they got the bugs out.