We recently sat down with Mike Jerrick, co-host of Fox’s syndicated The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. WNYW 5). A native of Wichita, Kansas and got his start in television at WIBW in Topeka. After Kansas he moved to New York’s WNYW to be a producer and host of P.M. Magazine and then moved to San Francisco’s KPIX where he hosted their version of the show called Evening Magazine. Then he moved to the national stage hosting shows for HBO, The Sci-Fi Channel, the short lived America's Talking channel, and CNBC.
Jerrick moved back to local television when he was to be co-anchor of Good Day Philadelphia at WTXF in Philadelphia where he spent three years on the morning shift until 2002 when he was tapped by Fox News Channel to be the weekend co-host of FOX and Friends. He later moved on to FNC’s Dayside and finally transitioned with co-host Juliet Huddy to the syndicated The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet which debuted earlier this year.
Can you tell us about The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. We take it is more than Fox News Channel’s Dayside without the news?
This thing is totally separate from Fox News Channel. Juliet and I, of course, did come from Dayside. The show there was 80-90 percent news, because we were on a news channel, and we had a big ribbon of personality running through a news show.
This is probably fifty-fifty. We are very topical on the show, but we allow that ribbon of personality and fun to get bigger and bigger. So it is probably fifty-fifty, real topical bordering on news and the rest of it is we’re having a good time.
You seem to have a great deal of fun on air. Do you prefer doing the lighter type of feature stories where you can sort of go crazy or the hard news stories?
I got to tell you, this may be surprising to people, I like the much more topical, again bordering on the harder news. I have kind of changed as I have gotten older. That is a little more compelling for me. That is what I watch when I get home. I got the news channels on, sports and not so much the fluffier stuff. But, I love to have a good time. I have had a good time my entire life. I have to choose, newsier, more topical, what everybody is talking about today. That is what I like.
You co-anchored Good Day Philadelphia for three years, have pinch hit a few times on Good Day New York and you were on the weekend edition of Fox and Friends and Dayside on the Fox News Channel. Do you prefer doing local news or do you prefer the national stage?
I love the national stage, no question about it. It is so much fun, but I am a fan of local television, that is for sure. Even though this is a national show, it has local texture to it and a local feel to it. But one of the reasons I do like local televisions is because you get to be more specific about your town. Like in Philly –oh those Flyers how are they doing, the Eagles. You talk about certain traffic situations on the Schuylkill Expressway and more specific interaction with the public as you walk around, that’s cool. On a national stage when I am walking around you may have somebody Michigan and Houston, Texas and L.A., that’s cool, too. You just can’t be as quite as specific and get into local politics and local issues. So it is both very exciting. I would never trade the national stage experience, it is fantastic.
Were you in the running to replace Chris Gallus over at channel 5?
That really never came up. I would have done it because I love Jodi Applegate and again I like local television. That is a great station and I really like Good Day New York the show itself for all the reasons I just gave you. But this, Roger Ailes, my boss here, had this syndicated show idea in place before Chris ever made his move back to Canada, so it never came up.
You mention Roger Ailes. You were on America’s Talking was that how you met him?
That is how I met him.
In 1994 they decided to put together a cable network of nothing but talk. 24 hours of talk, one talk show the other another. I think he had three months to slam it together, so he looked at thousands of tapes. He saw mine and said, "I’d like to talk to that guy.” Put a meeting together and in the in the first five minutes I though this would work. So that is where I got to know him. I think it was in April of ’94 and I have know him ever since. And he even mentioned back then in 1994 that he imagined me having a morning talk show. So it took this long to get it done, but it never left his mind is the way he tells it.
You have done a lot of interviews with a myriad of people, some serious, some not. Is there one or two that stand out?
This one right here. [Laughs]
They do become a blur after awhile, but this goes back. The only time I felt nervous or whoa this is a big deal a couple of times.
One, Ozzie Smith is my baseball here, my sports hero and I got to meet him and he signed a jersey for me so that was a thrill.
And Henry Fonda, long gone now, but it was such a thrill to meet him. I remember meeting him in a hotel room, that is where we did the interview. Knock on the door, opens the door and he has a glass of orange juice waiting for me. This big time actor, he made me feel at ease. Those two pop out.
Oh! Halle Barry. I have always been in love with Halle Barry and so I got to interview her twice. I remember the interview was set up a month in advance and so we had a countdown on the America’s Talking show and every day it was closer, closer and closer and she didn’t disappoint.
You and Juliet Huddy recently taped a guest shot on All My Children in the very difficult role of playing yourselves. Did you have fun doing that?
Well, I stayed up all night rehearsing myself. Now, I’ll tell you it was a lot of fun. When we first singed up to do it, “Ah, this will be great.” But when it got close, the day before I went into a panic. I thought it would be a couple of lines; you know “Hi I’m Mike, welcome to the Morning Show. . .” The script, I swear, was an inch thick and we had a lot of lines. So the way we got around it, because we hold blue cards on the set on our real talk show, they let us have our lines on blue cards. So when Erica Kane is giving her lines, [pretends to look at blue cards and mumbles] ok, “Yes Erica, you’re right.” So it worked out that way, but Juliet and I were both very nervous that we would forget our lines. Have you ever been over to the set at All My Children? It is all these union people and they are on a schedule, scene one. . . So if you screw up everything shuts down and you have to do it all over again and they don’t screw up, the actors on a soap. She is whipping through three lines of material without flinching and we are sitting there, “Oh my God, don’t blow this!” But we made it through and it turned out to be a lot of fun. By the way that airs May 29th.
You first came to New York as producer and host of P.M. Magazine on channel 5, and then you went elsewhere. Were you happy when you came back to New York?
Yes. I was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, but at a very young age in my twenties I moved to New York City for the first time and instantly fell in love with it,. I was doing a show in Kansas City; they hire me at channel 5. They fly me in, land at LaGuardia; take me to my first shoot in New York Harbor on a yacht looking back at lower Manhattan on a beautiful day.
I had died and gone to heaven. I would never leave here. I would tell my friends that I would retire here if I ever had to go a job somewhere else. I would love to retire in Manhattan, because it keeps you alive man. The energy is fantastic.
You also did a similar show, P.M. Magazine, out in the San Francisco Bay Area for KPIX. How did that contrast with doing basically the same show here?
It felt pretty much the same, except if you had to pick two of the greatest cities in the world, San Francisco and New York. Those are my two favorite cities in America, so I got very lucky.
It was exactly the same show. Instead of hitting all five boroughs in a week we would hit San Francisco, and then Tiburon, and then all the surrounding areas of San Francisco which are fantastic. But kind of the same thing. A good ethnic mix out there, just like New York. It was a similar deal.
Is there anything you miss about the Midwest?
I miss my friends. My closest friends are still the people I went to grade school, high school with. I’ve had my same close friends since I was 5 at All Saints School in Wichita, Kansas. I miss them, but I am constantly on the phone with them and e-mail them every day.
That is probably it. People you can trust and knew me before I got into television, so that is probably the number one thing.
And I do like the quiet of the middle part of Kansas. You can actually go out into a pasture in Kansas and hear your heart beat, that is how quiet it is. I like that.
