Phil Donahue pioneered the modern daytime talk shows featuring audience participation.
Donahue, a television pioneer who introduced the world to the modern format of daytime talk shows that featured audience participation, died at home surround by his family, including his wife of 44 years, Marlo Thomas. Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas attend the American Icon Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on May 19, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen., the program launched in Dayton, Ohio, in 1967. Donahue’s willingness to explore the hot-button issues 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.
“It may have been a full three years before any of us began to understand that our program was something special,” Donahue wrote in his 1979 memoir,. “The show’s style had developed not by genius but by necessity. The familiar talk-show heads were not available to us in Dayton, Ohio. …The result was improvisation.”
President Joe Biden awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May. The medal is the country’s highest civilian honor, presented to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” according to the White House.
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