Pioneer of Daytime TV Talk

BEFORE THERE WAS OPRAH, THE VIEW OR ELLEN, THERE WAS PHIL DONAHUE BY JOHN KIESEWETTER

Aformer altar boy from Cleveland pioneered the modern daytime TV talk show in Dayton in 1967— a year before 60 Minutes premiered and more than a decade before Cincinnati native Ted Turner launched CNN. The Phil Donahue Show, later just Donahue, earned 21 Daytime Emmys, including six as best talk show, eight for Donahue as best host and a lifetime achievement award, plus a Peabody Award, in the nearly 29 years it was on the air.

From the beginning on Nov. 6, 1967, Donahue dared to be different. His first guest was atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who, Donahue recalled years later, “told the audience that anybody who believed in God was a fool.” Jane Fonda came to his studio in Dayton’s WLWD (now WDTN) after her visit to Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Donahue was the first talk show to go to death row (1971), show a baby’s birth (1977), talk about AIDS (1982) and visit Russia’s crippled Chernobyl nuclear plant (1987).

It was considered revolutionary in 1968 when Donahue invited a gay man—“a homosexual”—to be on the show. “People said the world was going to hell, and we were leading it there. We took major, major pressure for appearing to celebrate what lots of our viewers thought was an evil lifestyle. We’re proud of the history we have,” he told me for the show’s 25th anniversary in 1992.

After moving the show to Chicago, he devoted an hour to AIDS in 1982, when only 300 had died and 700 cases were known. It was so new his medical expert repeatedly called it “A-I-D-S.”

Unlike Anything Else On Tv

Donahue was unlike any other talk show. There was no couch, opening monologue, band or sidekick. The 1957 University of Notre Dame graduate and former Dayton WHIO news anchor and talk radio host interviewed guest experts on everything from abortion, drug abuse, suicide, impotence and incest to alcoholism, feminism, racism, consumerism, pacifism, Nazism and nudism.

“And sex,” Donahue once told TV Guide. “Sex always works. Always.”

The late humorist Erma Bombeck, his neighbor in Centerville, told Newsweek in 1979 that Donahue was “every wife’s replacement for the husband who doesn’t talk to her. They’ve always got Phil who will listen and take them seriously.”

He mixed the hot topics with cool celebrity guests: Johnny Carson, Aretha Franklin, Bill Clinton, Harry Belafonte, Sally Field, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Sammy Davis Jr., Burt Reynolds and Marlo Thomas, whom he met on the show in 1977 and married in 1980, five years after divorcing college sweetheart Marge Cooney.

Audience Participation

But what really worked for Donahue was his audience. Donahue quickly discovered that the 200 people in the studio, mostly women, asked better questions than he did. They got equal time on the show, as Donahue ran up and down the aisles with a wireless microphone like a ballpark beer vendor on a hot afternoon.

Yet television success didn’t come easy. Early in 1967, Donahue had his fill of WHIO and quit after eight years to take a sales job. The father of five young children didn’t like working nights co-anchoring the 11 p.m. news with Don Wayne. What he enjoyed most was hosting WHIO-AM’s afternoon Conversation Piece show where his callers could speak to guests—Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X—phoning from anywhere.

His big break came a few months later when WLWD variety show host Johnny Gilbert—TV’s longtime Jeopardy! announcer—moved to Hollywood. Station manager Don Dahlman offered Donahue the live TV program to bring his Conversation Piece concept to TV, with participation by callers and a studio audience. His dressing room was the same one previously used by Channel 2’s TV wrestlers.

Shortly after his debut, Donahue showed viewers an anatomically correct boy doll. “It was like a bomb had gone off. The phone company said every phone in downtown Dayton was paralyzed because everyone was calling our show. I knew then we had the right formula,” Donahue told TV Guide

Going National

Despite a 50% audience share in Dayton, it took nearly two years for sister AVCO stations in Cincinnati and Columbus to pick up the show before it went national. The show was renamed Donahue in 1974 when it moved to Chicago for 11 years, then to New York for another 11.

Four consecutive Daytime Emmys (1977–1980) not only helped put Donahue atop the daytime ratings, but his 6 million viewers were more than Good

Morning America, the Today show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight show in 1979. He was No. 1 until Oprah Winfrey came along and won the ratings and the 1987 best host Emmy. Winfrey told The New York Times: “If there never had been a Phil, there never would have been a me. I can talk about things now that I never could have talked about before he came on the air.”

At the height of his success, Donahue did segments for Today (1979–1982), produced an NBC series (1986) based on his book The Human Animal, moderated a Democratic Party presidential debate with Ted Koppel (1984), broadcast a week of shows from Russia (1987) and did two Soviet-U.S. Space Bridge citizens’ summit shows with American and Soviet audiences linked by satellite (1985–1986) with Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner Jr.

“We get far too little information about them (Russians),” Donahue explained in 1987. “If we can sell them Pepsi, we certainly ought to be able to talk to them.”

As Donahue’s ratings slipped against Winfrey, Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera and others in the 1990s, he did a weekly Pozner & Donahue show for cable and syndication. After quitting his daytime show in 1996, he briefly did a nightly MSNBC show in 2002–2003, but was dropped due to his opposition to war with Iraq.

Trailblazer

He was 60 when he ended Donahue after 6,000 shows over 29 seasons. After blazing the path for Springer, Maury Povich and others, he struggled to stay on the high road while they wallowed in the 1990s “Trash TV” gutter.

“Viewers don’t want to see politicians. They want to see naked ladies … the fighting with Springer, the (body) guards. The audiences are being prepared on these other shows. We never told an audience member what to say. I mean, there are people being told … when to cry, when to scream. It’s all manufactured,” he said after retiring, speaking to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1993.

“A little voice kept saying to me: ‘They heard you speak already, so sit down,’” he told me in 2002. “It was time to leave.”

John Kiesewetter has written about broadcasting since 1985 for the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Public Radio’s WVXU.org

In her book, The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows, Laura Grindstaff defines “the money shot” as “moments when guests lose control and express joy, sorrow, rage, or remorse on camera.” In The Money Shot, Grindstaff takes readers “behind the scenes of daytime television talk shows, a genre focused on ‘real’ stories told by ‘ordinary’ people.” She draws “on extensive interviews with producers and guests, her own attendance of dozens of live tapings around the country, and more than a year’s experience working on two nationally televised shows.”

View several short video interviews recorded with Phil Donahue by the Television Academy Foundation at ohiohistory.org/Donahue1

Donahue: My Own Story by Phil Donahue & Co. was published in 1979 and tells the story of his first decade in television.

Donahue Details

BORN: Phillip John Donahue in Cleveland on Dec. 21, 1935.

EDUCATION: Graduate of St. Edward High School, Lakewood (1953); University of Notre Dame (1957).

MARRIED: To college sweetheart Marge Cooney 1958–1975; they had five children. To actress Marlo Thomas 1980–present.

BROADCASTING: Announcer/farm reporter for Notre Dame’s WNDU-AM (1955); announcer at Cleveland’s KYW-AM/TV (now WKYC) (1957, 1958); news-program director at WABJAM in Adrian, Michigan (1959); morning radio newsman, TV anchor and afternoon Conversation Piece radio talk show host at Dayton’s WHIO-AM/TV (1959–67).

DONAHUE SHOW: Broadcast more than 6,000 Donahue shows from Dayton (1967–74), Chicago (1975–85) and New York (1985–96).

OTHER TV: Contributed to NBC’s Today show (1979–82) and ABC’s Last Word (1982–83); moderated a Democratic Party presidential debate on PBS with Ted Koppel (1984); hosted NBC’s The Human Animal (1986); broadcast two Soviet-U.S. Space Bridge citizens’ summit shows linked by satellite with American and Soviet audiences and Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner Jr. (1985–86); celebrated the Donahue show 25th anniversary with an NBC special (1992); co-hosted weekly Pozner & Donahue show on CNBC and in syndication (1992–95); hosted Donahue weeknights on MSNBC (2002–03).

FILM: Wrote, directed and produced with Ellen Spiro Body of War documentary about an Iraq war veteran turned anti-war activist (2007).

BOOKS: Donahue: My Own Story (1979), The Human Animal (1985) and What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life, with Marlo Thomas (2020).

AWARDS: Won 21 Daytime Emmys for Donahue, including six as best talk show and eight for Donahue himself as best host and a lifetime achievement award (1996). Presented with a Peabody Award for broadcasting excellence (1981). Inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame (1993).