Richard Culliton is a Daytime Emmy nominated television writer known for his work on soap operas.
He began his television career in the 1980's writing for Texas and then head-writing, in 1983, the CBS soap Guiding Light (incidentally, the longest running drama in the history of American radio and television broadcasting, having started on radio in 1937). He served as head writer of Another World from 1984 - 1985. He served in the writing staff of the ABC soap All My Children from 1991-1993 under the leadership of Megan McTavish and Felicia Minei Behr.
He kept very busy in the late 1990's. He was one of the headwriters for As The World Turns in 1995, and received a Daytime Emmy nomination for it. He moved on to head-write General Hospital in late 1996 up to June 1997. In 1997, he created the General Hospital spin-off soap Port Charles along with his wife Carolyn, and for a time head-wrote for it, before being fired. Then from late 1997 to summer 1998, he was headwriter again (as he had been in 1984-1985) for Another World. He stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1999, but from summer 1998 onwards was only a breakdown writer rather than headwriter.
After taking a short break he briefly joined the writing team of Days Of Our Lives as a dialougue writer.
In the summer of 2001 All My Children head writer Jean Passanante moved to CBS' As the World Turns after creating many unpopular stories on All My Children. All My Children needed a new head writer, and Culliton was chosen to take on this job. After a drug pushing storyline (which was actually started by Passanante), dragged on too long, fans became frustrated at the shows slow pace. One of his more popular decisions was bringing back the character of Kendall (originated by Sarah Michelle Gellar, and currently played by Alicia Minshew) in early 2002. He was fired, however, as head writer in late 2002, and two of his writing staff took on writing duties for about 4 months until Megan McTavish could take over. Despite this he was nominated for Daytime Emmy Awards in 2002 & 2003.
He won the Writers Guild of America Award for Daytime Serials in 1997 for his headwriting of General Hospital, and was nominated in 2002 for Days of Our Lives. Earlier he had been nominated for As The World Turns as well.