Fox 29’s Mike Jerrick is heading to late night, but promises it will be ‘pure Philly’

Johnny Carson. David Letterman. Conan O’Brien. Mike Jerrick?

After having spent the past five decades on television, including a stint at Fox News and nearly 20 years holding down the mornings in Philadelphia at Fox 29, Jerrick is expanding his role with a late-night show.

His timing might not be ideal.

“Just as the genre is dying, I decide to do it,” Jerrick told The Inquirer.

The rumors of late night’s death are somewhat exaggerated, though the genre is certainly on life support. CBS pulled the plug on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon both average fewer than 2 million viewers a night.

But those are national programs. Jerrick’s show, appropriately titled Mike, premieres Monday at 11:30 p.m. and will air exclusively on Fox 29.

“This is pure Philly,” Jerrick said. “We’re not looking to expand to other markets and stuff like that. … This is a local late-night TV talk show.”

The half-hour program will have what you’d expect from a late-night show — monologues, a desk, a fake microphone, celebrity interviews — his first guest is Academy Award-winner Cillian Murphy (leading actor for Oppenheimer)— even a sidekick, in the form of Fox 29 senior producer Vince DeFruscio.

But one thing it won’t have is a studio audience.

“I could say we have no budget, but that would be accurate,” Jerrick joked.

The show won’t air live at 11:30 p.m. — it will be recorded earlier in the day and air in the evening, just like nearly every other late-night show. That will allow Jerrick to continue cohosting Good Day Philadelphia alongside Alex Holley.

“That’s our bread and butter,” Jerrick said.

At age 75, Jerrick knows the end of his TV career is closer than the beginning. But while he was being treated for prostate cancer last year, Jerrick had time to think about what would get his creative juices flowing, and hosting a late-night show was at the top of his list.

But it wasn’t Carson or Letterman on Jerrick’s mind.

Growing up in Wichita, Kan., Jerrick would tune in every day to The Mike Douglas Show, a syndicated variety show produced and filmed in Philadelphia at KYW’s former studios at 1619 Walnut St. and Independence Mall East (now the location of the National Museum of American Jewish History) from 1965 until 1978.

Douglas died in 2006, but Jerrick still remembers being mesmerized by the celebrities who appeared on the popular show, including James Brown, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and a 2-year-old Tiger Woods.

“I found the job and the life he had really appealing,” Jerrick said. “Deep down in my psyche, I wanted to do that, but I really kept that to myself.”

It turns out Jerrick’s interest in hosting a late-night show coincided with Fox 29’s desire to replace costly syndicated shows with more in-house content, which the station can also leverage online and on social media.

“So primarily, it was, ‘Yeah, we needed content,’” Jerrick said. “But I also needed something to get me fired up again. … So it’s a little selfish on my part.”

Regardless if it’s late at night or early in the morning, Jerrick plans to remain on TV as long as he’s able, in part because his father retired at 65 and “immediately got ill.”

“I’m going to ride this horse until the horse can’t move anymore,” Jerrick said.

With Mike airing at 11:30 p.m., The Phantastic Sports Show will now air nightly at 6:30 p.m. The sports-centric show will continue to be hosted by Breland Moore and Jason Martinez, though former 6abc reporter Jamie Apody has become a frequent guest over the past year.

At 7 p.m. the station will have a rotation of locally produced shows, including Kelly Drive with traffic reporter Bob Kelly, The Pulse with Bill Anderson, and The ClassH-Room with teacher-turned-gameshow host Richard Curtis.

Mornings will remain the same, with Good Day Philadelphia at 6 a.m., followed by The Good Day After Show at 10 a.m. BAM, cohosted by Anderson, Holley, and Mike Greenidge, airs at 11 a.m., followed by Hank Flynn on Good Day Uncut.