'Really enjoying this'
Tom Bergeron: Roundabout road to 'Hollywood Squares'
By Lesley Creegan
CNN.com Senior Associate Editor
(CNN) -- Tom Bergeron says he feels like a kid in a candy store.
• The 45-year-old host of the syndicated "Hollywood Squares" shares a Daytime Emmy with Bob Barker.
• He has what he describes as a brotherly relationship with Whoopi Goldberg.
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QUICK VOTE
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• He has a contract to work about 20 weekends per year, playing celebrity tic-tac-toe. And "Hollywood Squares" is watched by some 10.4 million viewers weekly.
Not bad for someone who was bumped from "Good Morning America." Bergeron had worked as fill-in anchor to Charlie Gibson. When Gibson left the show, Bergeron was considered for the seat full-time -- but it went to newsman Kevin Newman.
Bergeron says he has no hard feelings about his ABC-TV co-anchor Lisa McRee. "We were just different personalities and we were approaching it from a different perspective," during the search for Charlie Gibson's replacement. "She had a belief that the show was going in a hard-news direction. And clearly, without a journalism background, I was regarded, justifiably to some extent, as an outsider.
"I came away from that experience" in March 1998 "sort of reaffirming that my own comfort zone is in entertainment and less in news."
That "comfort zone" these days is centered around Goldberg, the show's executive producer, ensconced at the heart of the familiar nine-box set design of "Hollywood Squares." Regulars Caroline Rhea, Bruce Vilanch, Brad Garrett and Gilbert Gottfried rotate through the mix.
And this week's scheduled round of guest square-dwellers has the "zone" looking comfortably Olympian in a rerun of shows first aired in September. There's track and field's Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Bruce Jenner; gymnasts Bart Connor, Mitch Gaylord, Kerry Strug and Nadia Comaneci; diver Greg Louganis; skaters Scott Hamilton and Oksana Baiul; swimmer Janet Evans; and volleyballer Karch Kiraly.
Bergeron has admitted that the thought of being a game-show host didn't sit well initially. But he's gotten over it. The "Squares" airs on more than 200 stations and normally ranks within the Top 15 among syndicated shows.
He describes himself as "somebody who treats what he does as a job that's fun, that he enjoys, but that doesn't define him. And that's sort of always how I've dealt with working in broadcasting, regardless of whether it's a national show or a regional or local show."
 Defining moments
It was the manager of a small radio station who took a chance on Bergeron as a 17-year-old high school student in Haverhill, Massachusetts, putting him in front of a microphone for the first time. Bergeron was hooked and decided to bypass college in pursuit of broadcasting.
By 1982, when he'd moved to a station in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, his offbeat style and quick humor on the airwaves was attracting television stations in Boston. Bergeron found himself making a smooth transition from one medium to the other, hosting a variety of Boston regional-issue talk shows.
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GAME ARCADE
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In 1993, the cable channel FX tapped Bergeron to lead a morning talk show, his first work for a national audience -- "Breakfast Time."
"I was absolutely smitten with their approach to live television," Bergeron says.
His laid-back manner made him a hit with viewers, and the Fox network came calling two years later with an idea to expand the show to reach a larger audience. The new show, aptly called "Fox After Breakfast" gave Bergeron a lot of latitude.
"One show," he says, "Gladys Knight was my co-host. "Garth Brooks was there, and Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez and Beau Bridges were all just hanging around chatting. That made it look like, from the viewer's standpoint, they were Peeping Toms at this incredible party. For someone like myself, it wasn't like work.
"It was designed to be a live, flexible environment and -- given that it had an entertainment base -- I loved it. It was like breathing pure oxygen."
The show was cancelled in 1997, but not before exposing Bergeron to a wider audience.
 Gamy show
Bergeron says he never expected to be pegged into "Hollywood Squares." Prior to his short stint as Gibson's backup on "Good Morning America," syndicate giant King World Productions in Los Angeles wanted him to test as host of a revamped version of the original "human tic-tac-toe game," which had run from 1966 to 1981.
What Bergeron didn't know at the time was that Goldberg -- with whom he'd hit it off when she "guested" on "Fox after Breakfast" -- had signed on as center square and co-producer.
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Tom Bergeron and Whoopi Goldberg
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Following his departure from "Good Morning America," King World approached him again about flying to California and testing with Goldberg.
"I did and we had a ball and it just took off from there." Bergeron says. "I thought from afar, 'Oh shoot. This is probably going to be a good show now. She's got some clout. She's got star power and can raise the bar for the whole show.'"
An offer to let him commute from the East Coast to LA for weekend tapings cinched it for him.
But does he worry about game-show hosting damaging his credibility in talk radio and TV?
"I've been in broadcasting for 28 years and I never really thought of myself as anything but a broadcaster. I've done TV shows that ran the gamut from issue talk, exploitive talk, to entertainment, to now a game show.
"I nod I smile," he says of the artistic freedom the show gives him as host -- "and then I pretty much do what I want.
"There's an element of performance in all of it and I don't think so much of any potential pitfalls -- although clearly they exist. People get typecast and doors slammed in their faces everyday because of the perception of what they do. But it doesn't concern me that much. I wouldn't sacrifice the people who I'm able to work with, nor the quality of life that it affords me right now."
His shared win of the "Outstanding Game Show Host" Daytime Emmy last spring with Bob Barker of "The Price is Right" was a surprise in the industry, especially considering the indirect snub it represented to Regis Philbin of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." (Philbin's show did win the Outstanding Game Show award, but isn't a daytime program -- the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences was unable to find a category for it in the prime-time Emmys.)
"That was a such a treat," says Bergeron, "because it was so unexpected given Regis' popularity. I did have a few lines prepared just in case, which I had just planned to tell my wife (Lois, a former TV producer) privately after I lost."
 Round pegs
What's the formula that draws the show's audience week after week?
"I think, number one, it has to be funny," Bergeron says. "We genuinely like and respect each other for what we cumulatively bring to the party. I think ultimately it boils down to the chemistry of the people involved."
There's a balance to be struck here because the majority of the celebrities on the show make people laugh for a living.
"We can't forget that the contestants are the representatives of the viewers at home," Bergeron says, "and if we make it too much of a yuk-fest at the expense of the contestants, that turns off the viewer."
But he says he also likes to see how much he can get away with. Like the time he "whacked" a contestant for missing a question on what the Scarecrow asked the Wizard for in "The Wizard of Oz."
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"I'm never happier than when I'm at our house in New Hampshire, sitting on the back deck with a cup of coffee, reading the paper. It's all about being with my family and living my life."
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— Tom Bergeron, "Hollywood Squares"
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"Bruce Vilanch said 'a brain' and the guy disagreed. I took the card and whacked him. I said, 'How can you miss that question?' Whoopi said to him, 'It's "The Wizard of Oz," man! The house falls on the witch and Dorothy is chased by all those little white people.' So then I spent the balance of the show asking if he had any paper cuts."
On a working weekend, Bergeron flies from his New Hampshire home to Los Angeles, arriving at the CBS studios around 10 a.m. " Drink coffee, get makeup smeared on. Get dressed. Introduced to the audience about 10:45. Begin taping at 11."
Three shows are taped before lunch, which is usually catered by Spago. "Doesn't suck."
Bergeron and company are introduced to a new audience about 2:45 p.m. and two more shows are taped. He's usually out the door by 4:30, only to return on Sunday for more of the same. Before long, he's back on a flight to Lois and daughters Samantha and Jessica.
He says one of the best perks is being able to watch those kids grow up.
"There were a lot of years when I was up at 3:30 a.m. and never saw them until briefly in the afternoon and I was in bed before they were. I was sort of this shadowy presence. Lois got them a game one year called "Don't Wake Up Daddy."
Even in his current more workable gig, though, Bergeron says he's not sitting back. "It's like, 'what can scare me now?'"
He's written a novel "which is currently on the rejection-letter circuit", but he's quick to say he's learned from the experience. He also has a network comedy show in development. He'd love to do radio again, he says. And he points out that even an Emmy-winning game-show host isn't that high on the entertainment food chain.
"It's not what drives me anyway. I'm never happier than when I'm at our house in New Hampshire, sitting on the back deck with a cup of coffee, reading the paper. It's all about being with my family and living my life."
Then again: "Larry King has a great gig. Tell Larry if he wants to take a little vacation, I'll even wear the suspenders."
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