Only Regis understands me
In praise of a morning TV king
Earlier this week, I posted the fourth episode of my novella, The Unauthorized Guide to MindShifter. All eight episodes will go live every Thursday throughout Substack Summer, leading up to the thrilling SEASON FINALE!
The fictional TV show of my novella, called MindShifter, aired during the early 2000s. The period where I was an adolescent myself, watching TV throughout the 90s. It’s got me thinking about the TV of the era, the big names as well as the lesser-known ones.
There are many names to think of, big names, as this was the peak of Must See TV and watercooler shows and 30 million viewers before the valley of premium cable and then eventually streaming. The hugest names: George Clooney. Jerry Seinfeld. David Letterman. Friends. The Simpsons.
Yet there is one name I think of more than any other. One name, one man, who sneakily encapsulates the era better than any other.
That name, that man, is Regis Philbin.
Regis was a survivor from an earlier era of show business. A one-time singer who worked the lounges of the Catskills in a kind of neverending Rat Pack nostalgia tour, he learned how to connect with audiences made up of families. Way it worked was, you and the family would put on your best outfit (purchased from Woolworth’s) then went down to the supper club at 7 pm on a Friday to have the veal parm and see this Regis fella sing “Danny Boy.” You might roll your eyes, but your grandmother would weep.
Think of the night club scene from Goodfellas, the long tracking shot where Ray Liotta escorts Lorraine Bracco into the club through the back entrance. The old neighborhood still existed and this was the place to be. Elegant in a parochial way. That was how Regis came up.
But since he was coming up a good ten or so years after the peak of the Rat Pack scene, he never got to live that life at its height. He was a belated figure. But he stuck around—he never turned down work. He couldn’t afford to, those early decades.
He starts appearing on TV in the 1980s, because of course he does. So much of what we think of as 80s Gaudiness involves an attempt to recapture that supper club elegance of the Catskills in 1957. He bounces around for a few years before he lands on the perfect gig, the one that had been waiting for him all along: Live! with Regis & Kathie Lee.
Live! was about as low-stakes as TV got, which was precisely it’s charm. Airing at 9:00am, after the morning news shows, each show began with the hosts chit-chatting about the news, in the broadest sense. Regis would hold up the morning edition of the New York Post (never the Times) to read the latest “WACKO JACKO” headline. Then Kathie Lee would tell a story about her kids. Then Regis would recount the plot of the Seinfeld rerun he watched last night. Everything in the world was fine.
And because I was homehscooled, I ended up watching these first 20 minutes of Regis & Kathie Lee while eating my Corn Pops. And because I lived in Indiana, and Regis often spoke of his alma mater, Notre Dame University in South Bend, an hour away, I felt what would later be called a parasocial connection with him. A sense that I knew him, and he knew me, even though, of course, he didn’t.
YouTube has gotten me thinking about Regis. My daughters like a few YouTube personalities, most of which feature unboxing videos and wardrobe parades. Similarly low-stakes affairs. And I wonder, did Regis see the coming future of YouTube?
The reading-the-headlines bit that was Regis’ go-to move (Kathie Lee didn’t care about the news) reads like a foretelling of the TikTok era, where creators will read some easily-available piece of news media yet treat it as if it’s the long-long 10 Commandments from the Ark of the Covenant. We only trust the news when we trust the person looking into the camera and talking to us.
Perhaps the Regis of YouTube is already working and I’m just not aware of him. That’s fine, though. Stick around long enough and you come to learn some things are best kept unknown.