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Murphy In The Midst Of Leaving WTVT

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By WALT BELCHER, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 30, 2007

Updated: 12/29/2007 04:22 pm

TAMPA - Bill Murphy says he has "a little obnoxious clock" on his desk that is counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds toward his "retirement" from WTVT, Channel 13.

When it hit 13/13/13/13 recently, he took notice.

"People are coming up and giving me hugs and telling me they can't believe I'm going to go, and everyone is so nice," he says. "But I think it won't fully hit me until I leave the building."

He exits on Friday during the "Good Day Tampa Bay" morning show (7 to 9 a.m.).

"It's been a long run," he adds. "I've put in 30 years on television, and some of the best years have been with Channel 13."

Murphy, who turned 62 this year, is the station's weekend anchor, movie critic, feature reporter and man-about-Florida. He has worked at WTVT for nearly 14 years.

He is probably best known for his "One Tank Trip" reports that have spawned three local top-selling travel books.

He says he made the decision to leave eight months ago. It's an amicable parting, he says.

"Not that I'm a social butterfly but it occurred to me that I haven't had a free weekend in 10 years, and I was getting tired of turning down invitations to go out on Friday and Saturday nights," he says, adding that he might have stayed on at Channel 13 for a while longer if he could have gotten out of weekend duty.

"I know the weekend show is important to Channel 13, and it's successful as it is," he says. "I'm grateful that the station has given me the freedom to put my stamp on the show. We do the important news of the day, and when that is done, we can do some lighter things a la 'CBS Morning News' kind of stuff."

A New Venture

Murphy says although he is saying goodbye to television, he is not headed for the rocking chair on the porch.

"I am starting a new business, Travels With Murphy, which involves a number of things," he says. "Initially, we will be offering day trips for groups to some of the interesting places in the Tampa Bay area that I have discovered over the years," he says.

"I'll be going along as the travel guide," he says. "I am just schmaltzy enough to enjoy that kind of thing. I love talking to people. I love hearing about their lives."

Eventually, the trips may expand to include statewide destinations, cruises and possibly out-of-state locales.

"Who knows? Maybe one day it will be Travel the World With Murphy," he says. "And we'll go as far away as New Jersey."

He also wants to write travel books and produce travel DVDs. This time, he will share in the profits.

Murphy didn't receive any money from the sales of the "One Tank Trip" books that he helped produce for WTVT.

"I had no part of the business end of that," he notes. "But I was told that the three books sold more than 300,000 copies. I do know that each book spent weeks on the nonfiction best-seller list for Florida. It was the little book that could."

The books are still selling, and the total is well over 400,000, says Joyce LaFray, owner of Seaside Publishing in St. Petersburg, which published the books for WTVT.

"Bill was a very willing author who did more than 300 signings for us," she says. "Every time there would be a line of people. At one signing, we had to turn away 2, 00 people. He has a magic about him. People really like him. At these signings, women would ask, 'Bill, can I just touch you?' He did a lot to show people what we have in Florida."

Each book contains more than 50 destinations.

"And I still didn't cover everything that there is to see and do in the area. Tampa Bay is an amazing place, and I have places that I haven't been to yet. It's so spread out that people aren't aware of all the things we have within driving distance."

He has no complaints about the WTVT books.

"It was a great idea, and I didn't come up with it," he says. "It put me on the map and probably kept me employed."

From West Coast To West Coast

Murphy came to the Tampa Bay area in 1985 to host a morning show on WTSP, Channel 10. Born in Manhattan, Murphy relocated to the West Coast in 1972 after he served a four-year hitch in the Navy.

"I adopted the West Coast as my home," he says. "I worked in radio and TV in Washington State, California and Oregon. But I actually have spent more time in the Tampa Bay area than anywhere else. My daughter, Jessica, came out here when she was 3 and now she is 27. This is home for us now."

He was working as a news anchor in Monterey, Calif., when he auditioned at WTSP.

"I really wanted to stay out West, but I also wanted to do something that was more free-form than reading news off a TelePrompTer," he says. "There weren't a lot of local morning talk shows then, and now there are hardly any left."

When he was offered the job, he had to get out an encyclopedia and look up just where Tampa was.

"I had no idea what it would be like here," he says.

"Back then there was dinner theater in the Tampa Bay area, and I got to meet a lot of really wonderful celebrities," he says. "Maybe they weren't the A-list of celebrities, but they were interesting."

A lot of television personalities and former film stars passed through, people such as Debbie Reynolds, Mickey Rooney, Morey Amsterdam, Gavin MacLeod, Connie Stevens, Jamie Farr and others.

"Dorothy Lamour; bless her heart, sent me a Christmas card every year until she died," he says. "And Bill Daly from 'I Dream of Jeannie' became a friend after we had him on the show.

"I got to meet Bob Hope and introduce him when he performed at Curtis Hixon in Tampa," he says. "I got to interview Muhammad Ali, The Monkees and Little Richard."

Murphy says "Murphy in the Morning" ran nearly seven years: "There were more than 1,600 shows and 3,000 guests."

"We didn't have much of a budget, but we had a lot of fun," he recalls. "I got to open the show with a monologue, and we did all kinds of fun stuff."

An annual feature was the "Murphy in the Morning" parade at the Derby Lane parking lot in St. Petersburg, an event that featured accordion players performing "Lady of Spain."

The show ended with a change in management at WTSP.

"We were a ratings success, but the new general manager wanted to do something else," he says.

'The Bad Years'

The next two and a half years were what Murphy describes as "the bad years." He lost his job and his marriage ended.

"But it wasn't totally bad," he says. "I did some infomercial work and some commercials, and I was paid for close to half of it," he jokes. "Infomercials can be a shady world.

"I went out to Los Angeles for a while and then ended up on the Home Shopping Network on a late-night shift," he says. "There are some people in this business who look down on sales, but I think that we're all selling something, even if it's just ourselves.

"I actually enjoyed Home Shopping and did quiet well," he says.

In 1994, Murphy joined WTVT, and with Leslie Spencer as a co-anchor, he helped kick off "Good Day Tampa Bay," the station's morning show.

"I really feel fortunate that almost half my career has been at Channel 13," he says.

Murphy, who lives in a condo in Pinellas County, jokes that he plans to sleep as late as 6:15 a.m. if his cats will let him. He says he plans to spend more time on his hobbies: playing tennis and disc golf.

"I also want to do some traveling just for me," he says.

His first trip will be a train ride across America on Amtrak's California Zephyr.

For information about Travels With Murphy, go to www.travelswithmurphy.com. The "One Tank Trips" books are still available in most Bay area bookstores ($12.95 each) or at Seaside Publishing ( www.seasidepublishing.com).

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813 259-7654 or wbelcher@tampatrib.com.

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