Come Again?

Early reviews were not kind -- the Globe called Snow a "helmet-haired traffic cop" whose show was filled with "cheap gimmickry" -- and some early segments, such as a rumor of the week, were dropped. The larger challenge for Snow was establishing that despite his conservative credentials, he would be a fair and balanced moderator.

"Sometimes Republicans would call and complain that he wasn't tough enough on Democrats," Ryan says. "I think it was just that he was learning how to do live interviews."

During Bill Clinton's second term, Snow played a minor role in the Monica Lewinsky uproar. He had become friendly with Linda Tripp when they both worked in the Bush White House, and introduced her to New York literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, who suggested that Tripp start taping her conversations with her friend Lewinsky.

Colleagues sometimes grumbled that Snow wasn't tenacious enough at pinning down politicians when they fudged their positions. When major newsmakers appeared on the program, Fox producers would often ask Brit Hume, the Washington managing editor, to join in the questioning to give the interviews a harder edge.

"My role was not to sit there and club people with a baseball bat," Snow says. "You don't get the best answers from someone who's being clubbed. It was a matter of earning trust on both sides." While he continued to write a conservative column -- until Fox asked him to drop it -- he concluded that being more partisan on the air "would be an open invitation for one side to boycott the show."

During his first of several "Fox News Sunday" interviews with the current vice president, Snow began by asking whether the correct pronunciation was Cheney or "Cheeney." "A hard-nosed journalist would say, 'Why'd you ask that question?' " Williams says. "But that's Tony setting a tone. He's saying, 'We're not just going to exchange spin here; let's start on a human level.' "

Despite his television celebrity, Snow did not neglect his old friends. "He's never lorded it over people how successful he is, and that's such a nice trait," says his high school pal Allen, now a school spokesman.

When Beckel ran into some personal difficulties and television bookers were shunning him, Snow helped him get hired as a Fox commentator. "A lot of other people ran," Beckel says. "Tony was the first guy to show up."

In 2003, Fox executives believed the program had gotten a bit stale and recruited ABC's Chris Wallace to take Snow's job. Snow had always loved radio and was amenable to shifting to Fox's fledgling radio division, along with hosting a "Weekend Live" show for Fox News Channel. And, Snow says, he started researching issues intensively.

"With radio you've got your own soapbox," he says. "You realize if you're going to have opinions you'd better back them up. I kind of took a reporter's approach to talk radio." Snow was one of the few conservative radio hosts who backed Bush on both immigration and the Dubai ports deal.

The radio show was picked up by 125 stations, and top Bush administration officials -- Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- appeared periodically, as did some top Democrats. In his spare time, Snow played flute, sax and backup guitar with a rock group called Beats Workin'. Life was workin' out just fine.

And then, in the early days of 2005, Snow was diagnosed with the same disease that killed his mother.