Bankrate: Chuck Barris as an ABC censor almost strains credulity. The wolf guarding the hen house, right?

Barris: That's exactly right. I look back and can't believe half of the things I got involved in.

Bankrate: How did you come up with your first hit, "The Dating Game?"

Barris: I'm not quite sure. I know that at the time Dick (Clark) had a show for teenagers on ABC that was set in Malibu ("Where the Action Is") and I remember vaguely that I should have a program with young people. So I thought of this program with three guys on one side of a wall and three girls on the other side and they were all trying to get dates, and it came down to one girl and three guys. That was the way it started.

Bankrate: It was also the middle of the swinging 1960s and sweeping changes in society.

Barris: I always figured that I brought two things to television. One was spontaneity; we didn't have any scripts then. When I came in with "The Dating Game," television was doing either beat-the-clock type stunt shows and question-and-answer shows, but nothing on a purely spontaneous basis, where you answered with whatever you felt like saying. With spontaneity, you had great humor and you were never quite sure what they were going to say.

The first three "Dating Game" shows I did, we couldn't air because these great-looking girls and All-American type of boys just talked pure dirt. I couldn't get over it. I thought my career was going to be very short-lived.

Bankrate: Were you prepared for the success that quickly followed?

Barris: No, I really wasn't. Prior to that, I was $20,000 in debt and had to borrow from my stepfather to do the production of "The Dating Game," and all of a sudden we were making a lot of money. And I said to my accountant, I don't know what to do about all this success, I'm finding it difficult to deal with, and he gave me this advice: Just make yourself a little charm to wear around your neck that says "Chuck, you are a very lucky boy." And I did that.

But the explosion continued with "The Newlywed Game." We had five different shows on daytime television through the week, that's 25 half-hours, and then we had two at night with "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game," so we were doing 27 half-hours a week and it was bedlam. We had contestant operations going all over Hollywood. We had shows being taped at NBC, ABC and CBS. It was an amazing time. The time between 1965 and when we went public in 1969, those four years were like Camelot. I don't think anybody who worked for me then has ever been the same working any other place. It was just unbelievable. When we would get a new show, I would give everyone in the company a raise. Nobody ever quit working with me. They still have Barris reunions out in California of those people who worked during those years.