In an age before social media, chatting, and even email, chat show people who had something to say had two ways of expressing themselves: They may place a phone to a call-in present, such as Larry King Live, or they could area themselves in the studio audience of The Phil Donahue Show.
Phil Donahue, who passed away on August 18 at the age of 88, was undoubtedly the most athletic of all nighttime TV talk show hosts. In his prime, he would climb up and down steps and pass through rows of customers with the sole intention of placing a camera, which frequently appeared to be an expansion of his hands, before an audience member who had a question or comment.  ,
Let’s avoid being too sentimental about the host or the show. The Phil Donahue Show — a title later abbreviated, in recognition of its namesake’s star power, to Donahue — had many of the same faults as present-day news, opinion, and talk shows, including an obvious liberal bent and a tendency to sensationalize and simplify their subjects. All the same, Donahue, more than any other daytime talk show host of his era, genuinely savored what regular folks might have to say, or ask, on any given day.
In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Donahue recalled how his program was in its early days as” I realized during the commercials that these people in the audience were asking better questions than I was.” Without that studio audience, there would have been no Donahue show. For the first time ever, we moved the audience up close and placed the cameras behind the audience. Local television stations generally regarded viewers as nuisances.
Despite having a successful career on the national stage, Donahue stands out from the majority of contemporary media figures by portraying himself as the product of a particular place. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Donahue came across as something like a nosey, opinionated, free-thinking, no-guff Midwesterner. He would end up having a flat Midwestern accent that would be familiar to anyone from the area. He also carried the Catholicism that he had been raised and educated in. He attended the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated in 1957, a product of the Catholic educational system.  ,
aspiring news personalities are most frequently drawn to New York or Washington these days, but Donahue established their bases there during his protracted journey to success and for a while while doing so. His early work included radio and television appearances in Ohio and nearby states. Finally, he wound up in Dayton. The city served as the city’s starting point for The Phil Donahue Show, which debuted on WLWD-TV in 1967 and is credited with producing the Wright brothers.  ,
As Donahue remembered, he was chosen to take over a show that was already being produced for a studio audience, but it was n’t exactly a serious or lively discussion of the day’s issues. ” I followed a show that was piano, song … you sat in the audience, you hold up a sign, and you say hello to your kids”, Donahue told the Archive of American Television. He quickly changed the content while keeping the live bodies in the audience. ” The first show was atheists: Madalyn Murray O’Hair”, he said. ” Can you imagine? Dayton, Ohio, 10: 30 in the morning, turn on the television, and there’s this Donahue guy with the most hated woman in America”.
Therein lies an irony: Despite having the appearance and bearing of a square Clevelander, Donahue was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who was addicted to such attention-grabbing, then-outré subjects. His show dove headlong into topics such as AIDS, the Catholic Church‘s sex abuse scandal, and gay marriage. This was a part of his brand, but it was also a part of his own surprisingly countercultural makeup: He became so deeply connected to feminism and women’s issues that when Phil Hartman parodied the host on Saturday Night Live, the comedian made the emphatic and hilariously accurate comment that” Women are exploited in relationships! Because there are a lot of men out there who lie to them, who cheat on them, who live off them” ! ,
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When interviewing Donahue and his wife, actress Marlo Thomas, in 2020, CBS News Sunday Morning host Jane Pauley meant to praise him, but in fact damned him with faint praise, when she called him” a woke man”:” You were a feminist, at least your reputation. You were a daytime host who “got it about women”! Beaming with pride, Donahue replied:” Well, I had Gloria Steinem on my program very early, and all the feminists somehow seemed to sooner or later show up on the Donahue show” . ,
At his best, Donahue‘s intellectual curiosity trumped his undeniable biases. Yes, he invited Ralph Nader on too often, but to his credit, he was n’t afraid to bring on Ayn Rand and Camille Paglia, either. And in Donahue‘s final major encounter with the audience, his ideological inclinations remained intact. In 2002, about six years after the first Donahue episode ended, MSNBC brought him back on the air with a new show, but it reportedly came to an abrupt end due to its host’s isolated opposition to the Iraq War.  ,
Peter Tonguette contributes to the Washington Examiner magazine.  ,
