Phil Donahue, talk show pioneer, dead at 88
CBC
Phil Donahue, whose pioneering daytime talk show launched a television genre that made household names of Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and many others, has died. He was 88.
NBC's Today show said Donahue died on Sunday after a long illness.
Dubbed "the king of daytime talk," Donahue was the first to incorporate audience participation in a talk show, typically during a full hour with a single guest.
"Just one guest per show? No band?" he remembered being routinely asked in his 1979 memoir Donahue: My Own Story.
The format set The Phil Donahue Show apart from other interview shows of the 1960s and made it a trendsetter in daytime television, where it was particularly popular with female audiences.
Later renamed Donahue, the program launched in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967. Donahue's willingness to explore the hot-button social issues of the day emerged immediately, when he featured atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair as his first guest.
He would later air shows on feminism, homosexuality, consumer protection and civil rights, among hundreds of other topics.
The show was syndicated in 1970 and ran on national television for the next 26 years, racking up 20 Emmy Awards for the show and for Donahue as host, as well as a Peabody for Donahue in 1980. It included radio-style call-ins, which Donahue greeted with his signature, "Is the caller there?"
The show's last episode aired in 1996 in New York, where Donahue was living with his wife, actress Marlo Thomas. He met Thomas — the That Girl star of the 1960s who was a household name at the time and would later become a regular on Friends — when she appeared on his show in 1977.
He later said it was love at first sight, and they did a poor job of hiding it on the air. "You are really fascinating," Donahue told Thomas, grasping her hand.
"You are wonderful," Thomas said back. "You are loving and generous, and you like women and it's a pleasure, and whoever the woman in your life is, is very lucky."
The two had been married since 1980. Donahue had five children, four sons and a daughter, from a previous marriage.
Donahue returned briefly to television in 2002, hosting another Donahue show on MSNBC. The channel cancelled it after six months, citing low ratings.
He was born Phillip John Donahue on Dec. 21, 1935, part of a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Cleveland.
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