Regis Philbin's surprise decision to leave 'Live!'

NEW YORK -- Tuesday's "Live! With Regis and Kelly" had started typically enough, with the co-hosts batting the breeze about the Golden Globes broadcast, postseason football and the icy weather outside. Guests included Angie Dickinson and Steven Tyler, there to plug his new role as a judge on "American Idol."

Then, with surprising calm for such a famously excitable guy, Philbin changed the subject and said, "Well, I've got one of those announcements to make."

"I don't want to alarm anybody," he began before dropping the bomb: "This will be my last year on the show."

More specifically, he meant he will be stepping down from "Live!" sometime in late 2011, though he didn't pin down a departure date.

"We'll have a lot of fun between now and then," he promised his audience.

According to the show's distributors, Disney-ABC Domestic Television, "Live!" will carry on, with a new co-host to be named to join Ripa, who marks 10 years with the show next month.

"There is a time that everything must come to an end for certain people on camera -- especially certain old people!" cracked the 79-year-old Philbin.

True enough for certain people. But no one was expecting this acknowledgment from Philbin, whose energy, good-natured feistiness and gift of gab seem limitless, even now, after more than a half-century in television.

"It's been 28 years," Philbin said reflectively, speaking of his current Manhattan-based show. "It was the biggest thrill of my life to come back to New York, where I grew up as a kid watching TV in the early days, you know, never even dreaming that I would one day have the ability, or whatever it takes, to get in front of the camera and talk to it."

Philbin has been in front of the camera and talking to it since the 1950s.

But for a long time, his career took him on an uncertain, often rocky road.

He began in local TV, then found national exposure as the announcer and sidekick on comic Joey Bishop's short-lived ABC late-night show. More local TV followed on the West Coast.

Then he returned to New York, where he landed a local morning show in 1983.

The ratings grew. Two years later, Kathie Lee Johnson -- soon to be Gifford after her marriage -- joined him as co-host. In 1988, the pair went national.

Gifford left the show in 2000. After a tryout period for a replacement, soap star Ripa won the job as his female foil.

Philbin had clinched star status in the world of daytime TV when, a decade ago, he conquered prime time as host of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which resurrected the big-money quiz shows.

As Philbin prepares to exit "Live!" it remains strong, averaging about 4 million viewers daily and the No. 2-rated daily talk show after "Oprah Winfrey."