Phil Donahue

Phil Donahue (born December 21, 1935, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died August 18, 2024) is an American journalist and television personality who pioneered the daytime issue-oriented TV talk show. His hugely popular show aired from 1967 to 1996, and Donahue won nine Daytime Emmy Awards (1977–80, 1982–83, 1985–86, and 1988) as outstanding host.

Donahue graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1957 with a degree in business administration, but it was his experience working at then university-owned WNDU-TV station while in school that informed his subsequent career. He worked for a time as a substitute announcer at a radio and television station in Cleveland before landing a job in 1958 as news director of a local radio station in Adrian, Michigan. That led to his being hired (1959) as a reporter for the TV news broadcasts of WHIO in Dayton, Ohio, where he gained a reputation for his perceptive interviewing technique. In 1963 he became the host of a call-in radio talk show, Conversation Piece, at the affiliated radio station. Within a few years he had added hosting a business TV talk show and coanchoring the evening news to his duties.

In 1967 another Dayton TV station, WLWD, gave him a morning interview show, The Phil Donahue Show, with a studio audience. The format required that he have a single guest and one issue per show. Donahue’s first guest was the litigious and provocative atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and the episode created immediate public attention and engagement. Within a few shows, Donahue added the innovation of allowing members of the studio audience to ask questions of the guests. Featuring a mix of news and cultural issues, the show became so popular that in 1969 the station owner began syndicating it to other Midwestern stations, and within two years it was airing in 44 cities.

In 1974 Donahue moved his show from Dayton to Chicago, where it was broadcast by WGN and given the name Donahue. He was admired for his aggressive and unconventional style of interviewing, which involved much coaxing and prodding of guests. His show, which often focused on a topical social issue, was among the first to tackle controversial subjects on national television. His autobiography, Donahue: My Own Story, appeared in 1979. By 1980, the year that he married popular TV actress Marlo Thomas, Donahue had an estimated national audience of some eight million people and was especially popular among women. The program won six Daytime Emmys (1978–81 and 1985–86).

The nationally syndicated show began broadcasting from New York City in 1985. However, other daytime talk shows imitating Donahue’s formula, among them those hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael, began taking viewers, and more lurid talk shows made Donahue seem tame by comparison. In addition, his openly liberal and antiwar stances had become less popular. Donahue taped his last show in 1996.

Donahue briefly hosted another talk show on the cable channel MSNBC in 2002. He and documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro wrote and directed Body of War (2007), a documentary film following a paralyzed veteran of the Iraq War as he adjusts to civilian life and comes to oppose the war effort. Donahue and Thomas were the authors of What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life (2020). Donahue received the Daytime Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 1996. His other honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2024).