Phil Donahue, who reinvented US talk shows by including the audience, dies at 88
- Dubbed ‘the king of daytime talk’, Donahue was the first to incorporate audience participation in a talk show
Phil Donahue, whose pioneering daytime talk show launched an indelible 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, citing family members, 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 programme 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.
