Phil Donahue, whose pioneering daytime talk show launched an indelible television genre that brought success to Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams, Ellen DeGeneres and many others, has died. He was 88. NBC’s Today show, citing family members, said Donahue died 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. Phil Donahue hosts his television show in New York in 1993. Credit: AP “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 program 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.
He would later air shows on feminism, homosexuality, consumer protection and civil rights, among hundreds of other topics. Phil Donahue speaks with Judith Exner, one-time mistress of the late President John F. Kennedy.
Credit: AP The show was syndicated in 1970 and ran on national television for the next 26 years, racking up 20 Emmy Awards for the show and for Donahue as host. In May, President Joe Biden awarded a Presidential .