Valerie Pringle can finally sleep in.

After eight-and-a-half years of getting up at 4:30 every weekday morning, Pringle is quitting CTV's Canada AM. Her last day is Friday, July 6.

"The hard part of this job wasn't getting up," Pringle said yesterday. "The hard part was always going to bed."

Pringle, 47, also clocked eight years as co-host of CBC's Midday. "I get an eight-year itch," she joked.

She says she still loves the work, but was tired of walking out halfway through her children's hockey games or stranding her husband in the theatre.

She doesn't expect that the transition to sleeping in will be tough. "I don't have any trouble sleeping in on a weekend," she says. "As soon as I start holidays my body goes to eight to 10 hours of sleep a night. I'm thinking, this is what it wants, this is what it never gets."

After taking a month off, Pringle will tackle a few projects for various CTV specialty channels. This will include travel assignments for Travel TV, Animal Planet and Civilization, three new digital services launching this fall.

She has also been offered gigs on Discovery Channel and W-Five, but points out she is also free -- and willing -- to take her act to another network.

Canada AM executive producer Jordan Schwartz, who admits he was caught off-guard by Pringle's departure, says he will rotate a few co-hosts into the show throughout the summer before settling on a permanent replacement. "Canada AM is Valerie Pringle," he says. "My job now is to make sure we give her a great send off on July 6."

The new co-host likely won't be named until August when CTV News President Kirk LaPointe plans to announce other major changes to the network's news programming.

However, LaPointe says there was no major shakeup planned for Canada AM. "The show is very, very strong in the ratings. We created an extra hour this year and it very quickly found an audience."

Canada AM is far and away the No. 1 national morning show in Canada and runs neck and neck with CITY-TV's Breakfast Television in the Toronto market.

"When's the time to change your life?" Pringle says when asked about the timing. "I've done a daily current affairs and interview show for over 20 years, starting in radio. There's an unrelenting quality to it. I'd like to leave while I'm still fresh and happy. It will be good for the show to have new blood and try different things. it will be good all around."

Who will eventually replace Pringle at Canada AM? CTV's omnipresent Carla Collins would have been a likely candidate before she locked in as a morning show co-host of Toronto radio station Mix 99. CTV has also been testing singer Kim Stockwood out on Talk! Chatroom segments. The network does have a deal with Pamela Wallin, but the morning grind may not be her cup of tea.

A bolder in-house move might be to elevate Andria Case, a rising CFTO news star who could crack Canada AM's colour bar. Former Canada AM contributor, W-FIVE's Wei Chen, might also be on CTV's short list.

Not that the Canada AM co-host has to be a woman. Schwartz says "everything is a possibility," although he personally likes the continuity of the boy-girl set up.

If it is a woman, says Pringle, "she'll be working with the two nicest men in the world (co-host Dan Matheson and sports/weather anchor Jeff Hutcheson)."

"She's lucky I've left her that," says Pringle. "No scorched earth policy." (More on: Canada AM).