R.I.P.: Robert Earle, NY Radio, TV Broadcaster

Robert Earle, the articulate and fast-talking host of one of television's most challenging and popular quiz shows of the 1960s, "General Electric College Bowl," died from cancer June 5 at a hospice facility in Ithaca, New York.

Robert Earle

He was 93, according to The Washington Post.

"College Bowl" began on radio in the 1950s, then moved to television in 1959, as a clean-cut alternative to a game-show scandal exposed that year, when telegenic scholar Charles Van Doren, who died in April, was revealed to have been given answers when he appeared on the show "Twenty One."

On "College Bowl," two teams of four college students answered questions on science, history, philosophy, music, literature and other subjects. It combined elements of a team sport, high-speed oral examination and a football game.

Earle took over the show in 1962, when the original host, Allen Ludden, left to launch a new game show, "Password." At the time, Earle, a onetime broadcaster and college professor, was working in public relations for GE's corporate office.

For his audition, he taped an episode of "College Bowl," then spliced in footage of himself as the host, reciting all of Ludden's lines in exact time, as if he were interacting with the two panels.

He won the job and was the show's host from 1962 until it left the air in 1970. "College Bowl" won an Emmy Award for best quiz show in 1963 and, at its peak, was seen by as many as 20 million viewers a week.

Robert Earle was born Jan. 5, 1926, in Baldwin, New York. After serving in the Navy in the Pacific theater during World War II, Earle attended Utica College, then a division of Syracuse University, in Upstate New York. He received a bachelor's degree in English in 1951.

In college, he began working in radio and later in television. At WRUN 1150 AM in Utica-Rome, NY, he mentored a young Dick Clark, later the host of "American Bandstand."

From 1953 to 1959, Earle chaired the television and radio department at Ithaca College, before joining GE.

After "College Bowl," Earle did voice-over work for industrial films and commercials, including national campaigns for the Mercury Cougar and Liberty Mutual Insurance. He was vice president of marketing for a bank in Ithaca from 1971 to 1982.