Mike Jerrick's First Day...

Mike Jerrick's return to FOX 29 was today and his first day on "Good Day Philadelphia" was uneventful. He kissed co-host Sheinelle Jones and weathergal, Sue Serio, who commented "do you believe I'm still here!". Later, as he introduced traffic reporter, Jamie Shupak, he walked over to her to give a kiss on the cheek...all very hokey and silly stuff. GDP's John Anderson was reporting live from the Lehigh Valley on the Eagles summer camp with Hugh Douglas. Does FOX 29 really think Douglas has the chops for television? Wow---the guy is a disgrace to television professionals!

Jerrick returned to Philadelphia from his cancelled national FOX show "The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet" that lasted two years. He hosted GDP for three years from 1999 until 2002 when he bolted for a national gig with FOX News Channel.

Philadelphia Daily News' Dan Gross reports that plans are in the works for GDP to expand from four hours to five beginning September. John Anderson will co-host from 5 a.m. till 7 a.m. with Jones and then give up the anchor chair to Jerrick from 7 a.m. till 10 a.m.

Jerrick began his TV career at Topeka Kansas station WIBW-TV and later moved on to New York's WNYW-TV as a producer for a time before moving on to San Francisco station KPIX-TV. Jerrick also worked for HBO, Sci-Fi, the "America's Talking" cable network as well as CNBC.

WPVI's NEW DIGS

I hear everything is on track for the Action News family to be moving into their new digs in the next 4-6 weeks. Construction, which began in the summer of 2007, was completed some time ago. Now, it's the completion of all the wiring involved of an HD state-of-the-art type facility it is.

I'm told the station should go on-air from the new building by early September. As I wrote in late April, don't expect any drastic changes in the look of "Action News", only some tweaks here and there. The studio will definitely be larger which should allow some elbow room in future programming.

WPVI went on the air September 13th, 1947 as WFIL-TV. WFIL-TV was the home of Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" which hit our airwaves in 1952 and went national on the ABC network in 1957. WFIL-TV was also ABC's first affiliate.

A little known fact I found interesting? According to Wikipedia, channel 6 never carried ABC's new morning news show, "AM America", back in 1975 when ABC decided to create a morning news show to compete with NBC's "Today". ABC cancelled the ratings struggled "AM America" six months later and debuted "Good Morning America" in October of that year. WPVI only aired the first hour, opting instead, to air locally produced "Captain Noah and his Magical Ark" in the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. hour. It took three years until ABC pursuaded WPVI to air the show in its entirety. Similiar situations happened with ABC's "Home" show (anchored by Robb Weller and Sandy Hill) and daytime soap, "The Edge of Night". "Home" was preempted entirely and finally hit WPVI's air only to have the first half hour preempted. "The Edge of Night" never aired on WPVI but instead, on independent stations in Philadelphia that were contracted by ABC to carry the show.