In Memoriam: Phil Donahue

Daytime talk show host Phil Donahue died on Sunday, August 18, 2024, following a long illness. He was 88 years old.

“Groundbreaking TV talk show journalist Phil Donahue died Sunday night at home surrounded by his wife of 44 years Marlo Thomas, his sister, his children, grandchildren, and his beloved golden retriever Charlie,” his family said in a statement.

Donahue was a pioneer in daytime talk shows who covered sociopolitical issues and other hotly debated topics. The Phil Donahue Show gained national syndication in 1969, and ran until the mid-‘90s. Throughout that time, he interviewed counterculture radicals, KKK members, porn stars, and other controversial figures. He also interviewed politicians, heads of state, and was the only talk show host to interview Nelson Mandela right after he was released from prison.

He was born on December 21, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio. While attending Notre Dame, he got a job at a university radio station, eventually becoming an announcer. After graduating, he worked for radio stations in Michigan and eventually hosted a daily 90-minute radio talk show.

The Phil Donahue Show began in the late 1960s as a morning interview program. He quickly established a format of having only one interview subject at a time, focusing on one issue, and interacting with the audience throughout the show. As the talk show’s popularity grew, it started reaching more stations in the Midwest, it moved to Chicago, and was renamed Donahue in ’74. Two years after that, its reach expanded to over 200 stations and reached 9 million viewers. The show moved to New York in ’85 and started airing live to all audiences.

Also in ’85, Donahue and Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner started a news/talk show program for audiences in the US and Russia. Donahue went to the Soviet Union, becoming the first American talk show host to film a show there.

By the mid-‘90s his audience started dwindling as Oprah Winfrey began pulling more of the female audience, while other talk shows got younger viewers by filling shows with excessive drama and cheap controversy. The show ended in ’96.

In 2007, Donahue and Ellen Spiro wrote, directed, and produced the documentary, Body of War, which took a critical look at the Iraq War. He appeared on multiple talk show/news programs like The O’Reilly Factor, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Piers Morgan Show, and others. In 2010, he and other former talk show hosts Sally Jessy Raphael, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams, and Geraldo Rivera, appeared together on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Throughout his career, Donahue was nominated for 21 Daytime Emmy nominations, taking home the prize nine times, and he won a primetime Emmy for Donahue and Kids. He was awarded the Peabody Award in ’81 and he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in ’93.