Back in January, the television icon officially announced that he would be stepping down from Live! after co-hosting for nearly 28 years. Philbin said of his retirement from the show at the time, “There is a time that everything must come to an end for certain people on camera, especially certain old people.” The Emmy-winner joked on Tuesday, “Last January I made the announcement that I’ll be moving on. But I never gave you an exact date. So I’m pushing it back five years. Just kidding.
80 year-old has had a long and storied career in TV. Philbin took over hosting the late night "Westinghouse Tonight Show from Hollywood" in 1964 when Steve Allen left the show. Unfortunately, he never clicked with the audience, who was perhaps used to the looney antics of Allen.
From 1975-81, he co-hosted "A.M. Los Angeles," a local morning show on KABC-TV. His presence brought the show from the bottom of the local ratings to No. 1.
In the early '80s, Philbin and Cyndy Garvey hosted "The Morning Show," on WABC-TV in New York. At the time, the 9 am time slot for WABC suffered from low Nielsen ratings due in part to its competition; WNBC-TV was airing "Donahue" while WCBS-TV countered with block of popular game shows.
When Garvey left the show, Ann Abernathy briefly shared co-hosting duties. However it was in June 1985 when Philbin was paired with Kathie Lee Johnson (who would later become Kathie Lee Gifford), when ratings improved. The show was syndicated in September 1988 as "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" and in 1991 picked up by all ABC owned-and-operated stations except for WLS in Chicago (which aired "The Oprah Winfrey Show").
Gifford left the show in 2000 and soap star and New Jersey native Kelly Ripa was chosen as the permanent co-host in 2001 (Ripa is a graduate of Eastern High School in Voorhees). Eventually, the show was renamed "Live with Regis and Kelly" and it has flourished in the ratings.
In 2004, he set a Guinness World Record for "Most Hours on Camera" on his August 20, 2004 "Live" show. Atthe time of the record, it gave him a total of 15,188 hours on television. By 2006, the record was updated to 15,662 hours.
(Trivia: He replaced Hugh Downs).
Philbin was also the original host of the U.S. version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," an ABC game show that had its roots in Britain and was a gigantic ratings success in its 1999 debut.
A new co-host has yet been named for Philbin's replacement.
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