The broadcaster was hailed as the father of the modern audience-participation daytime talk show. Donahue's taste for controversial and polarizing subjects birthed a new genre of television.
Phil Donahue united a broadcaster’s telegenic appeal, an insistent curiosity, and a taste for provocative topics to create a new genre of television – the audience participation talk show – which briefly took over daytime television and sealed his status as a TV pioneer. The broadcaster, who was age 88, died on Sunday, his family said.
“I grew up in this game with stars in my eyes,” Donahue said in an interview with NPR in 2021. “I always admired mainstream media types. They went right for the jugular. It appeared to me they didn’t have to be popular. They just had to be aggressive and have their facts straight.” The host himself said controversy was the key to his show’s survival. “The coin of our realm is the size of the audience,” Donahue said. “What will draw a crowd, especially to a visually dull program? And we thought: Controversy. Controversy is what will do it.”
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