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.
