There was one more great “ebook moment” in 2010. In September, even 79-year-old Regis Philbin began discussing the end of the printed book on his morning daytime television talk show!
Today Regis Philbin announced his retirement, which makes this memory even more poignant. It all began when co-host Kelly Ripa brought out a new children’s picture book titled “It’s a Book.” She’d read its dialogue between a technology-loving jackass, and a monkey who still loves books. The confused jackass watches him reading for a minute, and then asks “How do you scroll down?”
“I don’t. I turn the page. It’s a book.”
“Do you blog with it?”
“No. It’s a book…”
“Can you make the characters fight?”
“Nope. Book.”
“Can it text.”
“No.”
“Tweet?”
“No.”
“Wi-Fi?
“No.”
“Can it do this? ‘Doot’…”
“No. It’s a book.”
But here’s where it gets interesting. It was a brand-new book, and the author had just delivered a very special version to Regis and Kelly. On the book’s inside cover, he’d suggested the book’s characters could be people on their talk show. The book-loving monkey was Regis, while the cute little mouse was Kelly, and the technology-loving donkey was Regis’s producer, a man named Gelman.
It was a special edition of the show — later, Gelman would try to teach 79-year-old Regis how to use a computer. (Regis is a notorious technophobe, possibly because he was born in 1931, back when Herbert Hoover was still President.) And yet in their conversation, Regis seemed to sense that his world had finally reached a turning point.
* * *
REGIS: It’s too bad about books, because just recently Barnes and Noble…
KELLY: Oh, I — they’re going to sell Barnes and Noble.
REGIS: — you know, just can’t do it any more. Isn’t that a shame, those bookstores slowly going out of business?
KELLY: I mean it’s like, to me there’s nothing better, also, than going in a library and smelling all the books and hearing the — the crinkling of the plastic covering on the b- —
REGIS: Yeah, exactly.
KELLY: I mean it’s just, I hope that we haven’t taken it too far.
REGIS: Our kids missed the big internet age when they were small, you know, and it was still books. And boy, I’ll never forget when we brought the girls here to New York, how Joanna loved these bookstores. And it was a thrill for her. I was taking — “Wanna go see a movie or something?”
“No, I wanna go to this book store.” Barnes and Noble on 5th Avenue, and all those stores.
KELLY: Now she’s an author. Now she writes.
REGIS: And now she’s an author. Yeah.
KELLY: It’s funny. My son just got his, well, not just, but over the summer, his seventh grade reading list. And it’s still books! So I’m happy to say that they’re still using books.
REGIS: Yeah. I guess there’s room for both internet and books, you know. But unfortunately…
* * *
Ironically, Regis Philbin has written two autobiographies — neither of which is available on the Kindle!