It looks like television’s most prolific career is coming to an end. On Tuesday’s edition of Live with Regis and Kelly, Regis Philbin announced that he is calling it quits on the show that he has hosted in some format since 1983. He didn’t specify a date for his final show, aside from saying it would be sometime in 2011.

Philbin, who is 79, made it clear that there is nothing specific of a medical nature underlying this decision, although he has had several health issues in recent years, such as bypass surgery and a hip replacement. He told the Live audience that “there is a time that everything must come to an end for certain people on camera, especially certain old people.”

Philbin is one of the last remaining celebrities whose days in television date back to the infancy of the medium — in fact, he holds the Guinness world record for the most time spent on camera. His first taste of the big time came when he was the sidekick on Joey Bishop’s late night show in the late 1960s, ABC’s failed attempt to take on Johnny Carson.

But by the 1970s, he found a niche in morning light chat TV. The show now known as Live began in New York in 1983, and went into national syndication in 1988 with co-host Kathie Lee Gifford. Even as he has hosted a weekday series for three decades, Philbin has always found time to do other work, most notably as the primetime host for Who Wants to be a Millionaire, briefly the biggest show on television.

Whether Live can survive without Philbin is questionable. Kelly Ripa has been a very popular replacement for Gifford, but most syndicated shows have seen falling ratings of late (even Oprah has not been immune), and the familiarity of old pro Regis may be indispensable, even though distributor Disney-ABC Domestic Television says that it will name a new co-host to team with Ripa. The most obvious choice would have been frequent Regis fill-in Anderson Cooper, but he has his own new show coming in the fall.