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Everyone starts out desperately trying to make a hit, but some people are just more mistake-prone than others. I happened to be fairly mistake-prone. Of the 40 shows I made, I'd say ten were hits, which is a pretty good average.

You do a show to be a hit and hopefully run a couple of years.

They say getting a show on the air and having it be a success, literally, the odds are like winning the lottery. For me, I've won the lottery several times, so I've been awfully lucky.

People are always coming up to me, thinking I've got some magic wand that can make them a star and I want to tell them that no one can do that. Making hit records is not that easy. But it took me time to realize that myself.

I would do the morning show and then just walk over to the network side of the building here at ABC in New York and sit down and start it up again and introduce the 10 contestants, and then introduce the 10 - the fastest finger question, and pick one of them, put them in the seat before you finally got to asking them the questions.

When you get into a production, there are a lot of things you have to hit to make the show work - like my cues or a cue for another person or making sure you don't mess up the beat, and you can let all of that get in the way.

You know, if you're lucky enough to have two smash hit shows, the traffic of the world goes through your dressing room.

My main thing is I'm gonna go out there every night and give it all I got and just try to put on the best show I can. That's just the way I'm programmed and wired.