In recent years, the talk show has become the most profitable, prolific, and contested format on daytime television. The sensationalist nature of many of these shows has spawned much public debate over the potential for invasion of personal privacy and the exploitation of sensitive social issues. In this environment, Phil Donahue, who is widely credited with inventing the talk show platform, appears quite tame. But in the late 1960s, when The Phil Donahue Show first aired on WLW-D in Dayton, Ohio, Donahue was considered a radical and scintillating addition to the daytime scene. 

Working at the college station KYW as a production assistant, Donahue had his first opportunity to test his on-air abilities when the regular booth announcer failed to show up. Donahue claims it was then that he became “hooked” on hearing the transmission of his own voice. The position he took after graduation, news director for a Michigan radio station, allowed him to try his hand at broadcast reporting and eventually led to work as a stringer for the CBS Evening News and an anchor position at WHIO-TV in Dayton in the late 1950s. There he first entered the talk show arena with his radio show Conversation Piece, on which he interviewed civil rights activists (including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X) and war dissenters.

After Donahue left WHIO and worked a subsequent three-month stint as a salesman, the general manager of WLW-D convinced him to host a call-in TV talk show. The show would combine the talk-radio format with television interview show. However, The Phil Donahue Show would start with two major disadvantages: a small budget and geographic isolation from the entertainment industries, preventing it from garnering star guests. In order to attract an audience, Donahue and his producers had an to innovate– they focused on issues rather than fame. 

The first guest on The Phil Donahue Show was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an atheist who contended that religion “breeds dependence” and who was ready to mount a campaign to ban prayer in public schools. During that same week in November 1967, the show featured footage of a woman giving birth, a phone-in vote on the morality of an anatomically correct male doll, and a funeral director extolling the workings of his craft. The bold nature of these topics was tempered by Donahue’s appealing personality. He was one of the first male television personalities to exude characteristics of “the sensitive man” (traits and behaviors further popularized in the 1970s by actors such as Alan Alda), acquired through his interests in both humanism and feminism.

Donahue’s affinity with the women’s movement, his sincere style, and his focus on controversial topics attracted a large and predominantly female audience. In 1992, he told a Los Angeles Times reporter that his show

Got lucky because we discovered early on that the usual idea of women’s programming was a narrow, sexist view. We found that women were interested in a lot more than covered dishes and needlepoint. The determining factor [was], “Will the woman in the fifth row be moved to stand up and say something?” And there’s a lot that will get her to stand up

Donahue attempted to “move” his audience in a number of ways, but the most controversial approach involved educating women on matters of reproduction. Shows on abortion, birthing techniques, and a discussion with Masters and Johnson were all banned by certain local affiliates. According to Donahue’s autobiography, WGN in Chicago refused to air a show on reverse vasectomy and tubal ligation because it was “too educational for women… and too bloody.” Nevertheless, Donahue’s proven success with such a lucrative target audience led to the accumulation of other Midwest markets as well as the show’s eventual move to Chicago in 1974 and then to New York in 1985 (the show’s name was shortened to just Donahue when production moved to Chicago). By then, the range of topics had broadened considerably, even to include live “space bridge” programs. Cohosted with Soviet newscaster Vladimir Pozner, these events linked U.S. and Soviet citizens for live exchanges on issues common to both groups. 

By the 1980s, however, the increasing popularity of Donahue had led to a proliferation of local and nationally syndicated talk shows. As competition increased, the genre became racier, with less emphasis on issues and more on personal scandal. Donahue retained his niche in the market by dividing the show’s focus, dabbling in both the political and the personal. He was able to provide interviews with political candidates, explorations of the AIDS epidemic, and revelations of the savings-and-loan crisis, alongside shows on safe-sex orgies, cross-dressing, and aging strippers.

In 1992, with 19 Emmy Awards under his belt, Donahue was celebrated by his fellow talk show hosts on his 25th anniversary special as a mentor and kindly patriarch of the genre. Fellow talk show host Maury Povich was quoted in Broadcasting and Cable as saying at the event, “He’s the granddaddy of us all and he birthed us all.” Phil Donahue broadcast out of New York, where he lived with his wife, actress Marlo Thomas, until 1996. Early in that year, he announced that television season would be his last. Ratings for Donaghue were declining, and a number of major stations, including his New York affiliate, had chosen to drop the show from their schedules. In the spring of 1996, Donahue taped his final show, an event covered on major network newscasts, complete with warm sentiment, spraying champagne, and expected yet undoubted sincerity.

After the ending of this hugely successful run for a syndicated program, Donahue retired from television work, dedicating himself to political causes and public service while remaining in the public eye as a spokesman for organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and a supporter of the third-party presidential hopeful Ralph Nader. Then, in April 2002, Donahue surprised many by agreeing to return to the television arena, signing a contract with the struggling cable news network MSNBC to host a prime-time current events program scheduled opposite the FOX News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor and the Cable News Network’s (CNN) new show, Connie Chung Tonight. The latest program to be called Donahue debuted in July 2002. After six months of faring poorly in the ratings, however, the show was canceled on February 25, 2003.