When Regis Philbin arrived at WABC-TV in 1983 to host the morning talk show on ABC’s flagship station in New York, he knew this was his big chance to make a splash. Five years later, the splash came in «Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.»
NEW YORK — When Regis Philbin arrived at WABC-TV in 1983 to host the morning talk show on ABC’s flagship station in New York, he knew this was his big chance to make a splash. Philbin, of course, was already a celebrity, having hosted popular talk shows in cities such as Los Angeles, and he was famously Joey Bishop’s sidekick on «The Joey Bishop Show» in the 1960s. In Los Angeles, he had taken A. M. Los Angeles, on WABC’s sister KABC-TV, to the top of the ratings, and now, he inherited the latest version of WABC’s morning talk show, rechristened «The Morning Show.»Regis told entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon back in 2011 that he knew the stakes were high.
