R.I.P. Phil Donahue, legendary talk show host

Phil Donahue—the pioneering host of The Phil Donahue Show (later renamed Donahue)—has died. His family confirmed to Today that he died at home following an unspecified “long illness,” surrounded by his family and “beloved golden retriever, Charlie.” He was 88.

The modern daytime talk show owes almost everything to Donahue. The Ohio-born host invented the audience participation format during the very first episode of his Dayton-based series, The Phil Donahue Show, in 1967. According to The New York Times, the studio audience had gathered for a variety show which had actually been canceled. Instead, Donahue suggested letting them watch him interview Madalyn Murray O’Hair, an atheist who had successfully argued against school prayer in front of the supreme court. He eventually let audience members ask their own questions, and a new type of show—one that remains popular today—was born.

By 1969, The Phil Donahue Show was so successful that the Avco Broadcasting Co. began syndicating it to other stations around the country. Seven years later, the name of the show had been shortened to Donahue and it was being broadcast on more than 200 stations, reaching around 9 million viewers, the majority of them women. In 1985, the show moved to New York and began airing live (via Variety).

Donahue was known for touching on issues that were considered highly polarizing at the time, including feminism, war, abortion, and more. According to Variety, his guests included politicians, porn stars, ‘60s radicals, KKK members, and everyone in between. He was the only talk show host to speak to Nelson Mandela right after his release from prison, and also spoke to Ronald Reagan, Gloria Steinem, John Wayne, and many more. 

After 29 years and almost 7,000 hour-long episodes, Donahue ended its run on September 13, 1996. In 2002, he briefly returned with a new MSNBC talk show (also titled Donahue), but it was canceled after only six months. To hear him tell it, he was fired because management considered him too progressive a figure to comment on the country’s impending war with Iraq. “I was counted as two liberals,” he told Time in 2007, suggesting that his bosses “ordered his reporters to have two conservative guests for every one liberal.” He spoke out against the war anyway, co-directing a documentary called Body Of War about an injured veteran with Ellen Spiro in 2007. He also made frequent appearances on some of the programs he helped inspire, including The O’Reilly Factor, Real Time With Bill Maher, Hannity, The Piers Morgan Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and more. 

In a 2002 interview, Winfrey called Donahue a “trailblazer,” writing, “If there had been no Phil Donahue show, there would be no Oprah Winfrey show. He was the first to acknowledge that women are interested in more than mascara tips and cake recipes—that we’re intelligent, we’re concerned about the world around us, and we want the best possible lives for ourselves.”