Phil Donahue, host of the long-running Phil Donahue Show (which was later shortened to Donahue) who died at the age of 88 on Sunday night, changed how Americans watch television.
The format and topics he chose blew down the doors for Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer and laid the groundwork for everything from reality television to—arguably—Donald Trump.
From race relations to male strippers and child sex abuse, Donahue tackled it all and made once-taboo topics on TV become business as usual. “I took a lot of heat,” Donahue told broadcaster Piers Morgan in 2012, “We brought male strippers to daytime television.”
But Donahue wouldn’t have been an obvious pick for ‘Most Likely To Disrupt The Television Industry.’ Born in West Park, an Irish-American stronghold of Cleveland to devout Catholic shoe and furniture sales clerks, Donahue would go on to work as a check sorter and salesman before his assistant job at a radio station led to his first as an announcer.
After he gained popularity for his sit-downs with guests like then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Noam Chomsky, Muhammad Ali, and more, he became a staple voice, garnering plenty of fans willing to follow him to TV—but more would be needed to keep the interest. “We started locally in Dayton with two cameras and no stars—we could only afford to fly in two guests a week,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2002, “We knew we were visually dull, so we had to go to issues—that’s what made us alive.”
Everyone who was anyone needed to be on the Donahue show. In 1992 it was then Democratic candidate Bill Clinton and his running mate Al Gore who were guests.
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The local show in Dayton then became so popular that it was picked up by several other stations in the Midwest before it was moved to Chicago and renamed Donahue in 1974. Though his show began like the others of its kind, with the usual guest and host format, he made the change to use studio audiences for his discussions and reigned in the space for most of his 29 years on air.
By adding conversation participation from a studio audience on the most off-limits topics like “What color is Jesus?” Donahue created an irresistible format that every daytime television show would follow from that point forward.
In the Jesus episode, the host presented two Jesus statuettes to his studio audience in 1992, one white and one Black, and simply posed the question and allowed the audience to answer—a tactic he used frequently, allowing things to get heated. And yet, he never shied away from any topic and revisited race several times over the course of his nearly three-decade run.
Decades before more mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, in 1967, he was one of the first to host an openly gay man on daytime television. Though he was accused of sensationalizing some issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community (like his segment on trans sex workers), he was lauded for shedding light on sexual topics considered taboo. In all, he earned 20 Emmys. His ratings for most of the show’s run showed he was doing all the right things, with 8 million viewers tuning in daily at the height of the show’s popularity.
Stars and those who wanted to be stars knew it was the show to be on—among them, in 1987, Donald Trump, pushing his book The Art of the Deal, which promoted former President Richard Nixon to write to the property scion, saying that his wife Pat had watched the show and that Trump was “great.”
Viewers also flocked to Donahue for his conversation about child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which he devoted a whole segment to in 1988—one of the first times the issue had been discussed on television. The segment influenced more victims to come forward. Donahue was himself Catholic, though “lapsed,” he admitted and attended an all-boys Catholic high school.
Donahue made the audience a vital part of the show, allowing them to speak about their own experiences or weigh in with questions for guests.
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Though Donahue covered serious issues like abortion, domestic violence, and incest, there was always room in the show for tackier more sensational segments like “dwarf-tossing” or revealing marital infidelity. “A little nonsense never hurt anyone,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2002, “We’re not Nightline.” The mix of topics would pave the way for Springer and Winfrey, as well as daytimers Jenny Jones and Ricki Lake, among others, who eventually knocked Donahue off the air in 1996 by sucking up his viewership numbers.
But his presence continued to be felt by those who took up the tabloid-TV torch. As Winfrey wrote on Instagram Monday, “There wouldn’t have been an Oprah Show without Phil Donahue being the first to prove that daytime talk and women watching should be taken seriously.”
“He was a pioneer. I’m glad I got to thank him for it. Rest in peace Phil.”
