Phil Donahue

Phil Donahue
Phil Donahue at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2007
Born	Phillip John Donahue (1935-12-21) December 21, 1935 (age 76) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Residence	Westport, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	B.B.A., University of Notre Dame
Occupation	Talk show host Film producer
Years active	1957–present
Religion	Roman Catholic[1]
Spouse	Marge Cooney (1958–75, divorced, 5 children) Marlo Thomas (1980–present)

Phillip John "Phil" Donahue (born December 21, 1935) is an American media personality, writer, and film producer best known as the creator and host of The Phil Donahue Show. The television program, also known as Donahue, was the first to use a talk show format. The show had a 26-year run on U.S. national TV, preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, before ending in 1996.

His shows have often focused on issues that often divide liberals and conservatives in the United States, such as abortion, consumer protection, civil rights and war issues. His most frequent guest was Ralph Nader, for whom Donahue campaigned in 2000.^[1] Donahue also hosted a talk show on MSNBC from 2002–2003.

In 1996, Donahue was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.^[2]

Early life

Donahue was born into a middle-class, churchgoing, Irish Catholic family in Cleveland, Ohio; his father was a furniture sales clerk and his mother a department store shoe clerk.^[3][4] In 1949, he graduated from of Our Lady Of Angels elementary school in the West Park neighborhood. In 1953, Donahue was a member of the first graduating class of St. Edward High School, an all-boys college prep Catholic private high school run by the Congregation of Holy Cross in suburban Lakewood, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, which is also run by the Congregation of Holy Cross, with a B.B.A in 1957.

Career

Donahue began his career in 1957 as a production assistant at KYW radio and television in Cleveland. He got a chance to become an announcer one day when the regular announcer failed to show up. After a brief stint as a bank check sorter in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he became program director for WABJ radio in Adrian, Michigan, soon after graduating. He moved on to become a stringer for the CBS Evening News and later, an anchor of the morning newscast at WHIO-TV in Dayton, Ohio, where his interviews with Jimmy Hoffa and Billie Sol Estes were picked up nationally. While in Dayton, Donahue also hosted Conversation Piece, a phone-in afternoon talk show from 1963 to 1967 on WHIO radio. There, among others, he interviewed civil rights activists (including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X) and war dissenters.

The Phil Donahue Show

Donahue with guest Johnny Carson in August, 1970.

On November 6, 1967, Donahue left WHIO, moving his talk program to television with The Phil Donahue Show on WLWD (now WDTN), also in Dayton. Initially, the program was shown only on other stations owned by the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation (which would later take the name of its parent Avco Company), which also owned WLWD. But, in January 1970, The Phil Donahue Show entered nationwide syndication. Donahue's syndicated show was originally taped in Chicago where he worked and lived: then in 1984, he moved the show to New York City to be near his wife Marlo Thomas.

After a 29-year run—26 years in syndication—and nearly 7,000 one-hour daily shows, the final original episode of Donahue aired in May 1996, culminating what remains the longest continuous run of any syndicated talk show in U.S. television history.

While hosting his own program, Donahue also appeared on NBC's The Today Show as a contributor, from 1980 until 1982. From 1991 to 1994 he also co-hosted Pozner/Donahue, a weekly, issues-oriented roundtable program with Soviet journalist Vladimir Pozner, which aired both on CNBC and in syndication.^[5]

MSNBC program

In July 2002, Phil Donahue returned to television to host a show called Donahue on MSNBC. On February 25, 2003, MSNBC canceled the show, citing low viewership. According to the New York Times despite being heavily promoted by MSNBC and having a debuting audience of 660,000 only three weeks into the show, viewership had fallen to 390,000 viewers.^[6] By the end of 2002, Donahue’s audience was down to 379,000.^[7] Although his ratings were less than 1/6 Bill O'Reilly, whose The O'Reilly Factor shared the same time slot, Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time it was canceled, managing to beat out Chris Matthews' "Hardball" in the ratings.^[8] Soon after the show's cancellation AllYourTV.com reported it had received a copy of an internal NBC memo that stated Donahue should be fired because he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war".^[8][9] In 2005 Norman Solomon's book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State came to the same conclusion.

Film producer

In 2007, Donahue served as Executive Producer for the feature documentary film, Body of War, which he also co-directed with independent filmmaker Ellen Spiro. The film tells the story of Tomas Young, a severely disabled Iraq War veteran and his turbulent postwar adjustments. In November 2007 the film was named as one of fifteen documentaries to be in consideration for an Oscar nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[10]

Honors

Donahue was awarded nine Emmy Awards during his broadcasting career, and was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame on November 20, 1993.

Personal life

In 1958, he married his first wife, Marge Cooney, who divorced him in 1975. They have five children. He married his second (and present) wife, actress Marlo Thomas (daughter of Danny Thomas), in 1980. They have lived in Westport, Connecticut since 1986.^[11]

Donahue does not see himself as "a very good Roman Catholic," given that he did not want to have his first marriage annulled.^[1] He has elaborated that he "will always be a Catholic" but that he opposes what he sees as the Church's "antisexual theology."^[1] He has also said that he found Madalyn Murray O'Hair's message of atheism "very important."^[12] He has admitted that he is not permitted to receive the Blessed Sacrament, since the Church sees him as living in a state of adultery.

On November 10, 2010, Oprah Winfrey invited Donahue, along with former talk show hosts Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Ricki Lake and Montel Williams as guests on her show. This was the first time that she had fellow talkers appear together since their programs left the air.^[13]

References

External links

• Phil Donahue at the Internet Movie Database
• Body of War
• Interview with Phil Donahue on "Body of War" at IFC.com
• Donahue, Phil from Museum of Broadcast Communications
• Interview with Phil Donahue on the state of the media from Democracy Now!
• Video Interview from Archive of American Television
• Phil Donahue Interview on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Donahue, March 23, 2008