The Chuck Woolery Show

In addition to his duties as host, Woolery served as a co-executive producer with Eric Lieber, who was also producing Love Connection in syndication with Woolery hosting. Charles Colarusso, a veteran television producer, was one of the show’s producers with former Goodson-Todman Productions producer Jake Tauber and former Divorce Court and Tomorrow producer Bruce McKay joining him and Lieber.

Each episode of The Chuck Woolery Show opened with a skateboard positioned somewhere on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A person wearing blue Chuck Taylor All-Stars would run up to it and jump on it, with the camera panning up to reveal Woolery riding the skateboard.

As the show’s theme song played, Woolery (or, to be precise, a stunt double) rode the skateboard along the sidewalk, doing tricks and dodging pedestrians on his way into the studio, making it inside just before the door to the stage closed behind him.

The Chuck Woolery Show, like some other shows of the day, was a celebrity-driven show. Each episode featured four celebrities, and Woolery would spend several minutes talking with each one individually. The interview area was set up much like the way the stage was set up on The Arsenio Hall Show, with a lounge chair for Woolery to sit in and a couch for the guests as opposed to the usual desk and chair setup so many other celebrity talk shows have used.

Also, like many talk shows of its ilk, The Chuck Woolery Show employed a live band to play in the studio. The ensemble was led by the show’s music director Dana Robbins, who at the time was a widely regarded session player whose specialty is the saxophone and who currently is the lead saxophone player in Delbert McClinton’s backing band.

The show would sometimes feature a studio audience member ask questions to each of the four guests for a particular day.[1]

The Chuck Woolery Show was one of several talk shows to premiere as part of the 1991–92 television season, joining The Jenny Jones Show, The Maury Povich Show, The Montel Williams Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. It was also the only one of those programs that did not make it past that season, as all of the others managed runs of over ten years and Povich's program still airs as of 2020.

The show was originally going to be distributed by Orion Television, with Group W handling advertising sales. Many NBC affiliates, where audiences were already familiar with Woolery due to his hosting of the game show Scrabble on the network, signed on as did the stations that were owned by Westinghouse and Viacom. WCBS-TV and WMAQ-TV were among the network owned-and-operated stations that chose to pick it up as well.[2]

Despite the clearances, trouble plagued the production from the start. Original producer Orion Television was in financial difficulty when The Chuck Woolery Show was being developed and in early 1991 ceased all production activity. Group W stepped in to serve as distributor and producer, but several stations dropped the series. It also never aired in some markets due to lack of interest.

The initial ratings were also low and continued to stay as such. It was also claimed that executive producer Eric Lieber was particularly hostile to station managers who were carrying the show. Randy West, the show’s announcer, has said that the final straw came when a producer (presumably Lieber) got into a heated argument with an executive at its biggest affiliate, WCBS. The station had added Woolery’s program to its morning lineup for the 1991-92 season, airing it at 9:00 AM following CBS This Morning. After the incident, the station almost immediately relocated the show to an overnight time slot.

Whatever the reasons were, The Chuck Woolery Show never caught on with audiences and the show was not renewed beyond the initial thirteen weeks of episodes.

Woolery would continue to host Love Connection during and after production of his talk show.