Phillip John "Phil" Donahue (born December 21, 1935) is an
Emmy AwardThe Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards , Grammy Awards and Tony Awards .They are presented in various...
winning American media personality and
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
, best known as the creator and star of
The Phil Donahue ShowThe Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, was a tabloid talk show. The show had a 26-year run on national television, preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, before ending in 1996.-History:...
, also known as
Donahue, the first
tabloid talk showTabloid talk shows are a genre of American television talk-shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through syndication, this genre originated with The Phil Donahue Show and was popularized by the personal...
. The show had a 26-year run on U.S. national TV, preceded by three years of local broadcast in
Dayton, OhioDayton is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 848,153 in the 2000 census. Dayton is the fourth largest...
, before ending in 1996.
His shows have generally focused on issues that often divide
liberalsLiberalism in the United States is a broad political and philosophical mindset favoring individual liberty. According to Louis Hartz, it differs from liberalism in the rest of the world, because America never had a hereditary aristocracy and therefore never turned to socialism, as many European...
and
conservativesConservatism in the United States is a major American political philosophy. In contemporary American politics, it is often associated with the Republican Party...
in the United States, such as
abortionAn abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo. An abortion can occur spontaneously due to complications during pregnancy or can be induced, in humans and other species...
, consumer protection,
civil rightsCivil and political rights are a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from unwarranted government action and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression....
and war protests.
Phillip John "Phil" Donahue (born December 21, 1935) is an
Emmy AwardThe Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards , Grammy Awards and Tony Awards .They are presented in various...
winning American media personality and
writerA writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms.-Profession:...
, best known as the creator and star of
The Phil Donahue ShowThe Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, was a tabloid talk show. The show had a 26-year run on national television, preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, before ending in 1996.-History:...
, also known as
Donahue, the first
tabloid talk showTabloid talk shows are a genre of American television talk-shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through syndication, this genre originated with The Phil Donahue Show and was popularized by the personal...
. The show had a 26-year run on U.S. national TV, preceded by three years of local broadcast in
Dayton, OhioDayton is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 848,153 in the 2000 census. Dayton is the fourth largest...
, before ending in 1996.
His shows have generally focused on issues that often divide
liberalsLiberalism in the United States is a broad political and philosophical mindset favoring individual liberty. According to Louis Hartz, it differs from liberalism in the rest of the world, because America never had a hereditary aristocracy and therefore never turned to socialism, as many European...
and
conservativesConservatism in the United States is a major American political philosophy. In contemporary American politics, it is often associated with the Republican Party...
in the United States, such as
abortionAn abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo. An abortion can occur spontaneously due to complications during pregnancy or can be induced, in humans and other species...
, consumer protection,
civil rightsCivil and political rights are a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from unwarranted government action and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression....
and war protests. His most frequent guest was
Ralph NaderRalph Nader is an American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist, and former candidate for President of the United States. He ran as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008, and a Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2000. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection,...
and Donahue campaigned for Nader in
2000The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush , and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President. Bill Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position...
. Donahue also hosted a talk show on
MSNBCMSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States and available in both the US and Canada. Its name is a combination of "MSN" and "NBC"....
from 2002 – 2003.
Personal history
Donahue was born into a middle-class, churchgoing
Irish CatholicIrish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Catholic and Irish .The term is of note due to Irish immigration to many countries of the English speaking world, particularly as a result of the Great Irish Famine in the late 1840s, following which the population declined by over half...
family in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
; his father was a furniture sales clerk and his mother a department store shoe clerk. In 1949, he was in the graduating class of Our Lady Of Angels
elementary schoolAn elementary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America...
in the
West ParkWest Park is a west side neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Originally part of Rockport Township, West Park was thought to be named after Benjamin West, an early settler; but in truth it was named for another early settler, John West. It was annexed to Cleveland in 1922, the last large suburb to...
neighborhood. In 1953, Donahue was a member of the first graduating class of
St. Edward High SchoolSt. Edward High School is private, all-male Catholic, college-preparatory high school located in Lakewood, Ohio, a western Cleveland suburb. It was founded in 1949 and is operated in the by the Midwest Province of the Brothers of Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Indiana...
, an all-boys college prep Catholic high school run by the Brothers of Holy Cross in suburban
Lakewood, OhioLakewood is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is part of the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area, and borders the city of Cleveland...
. He graduated from the
University of Notre DameThe University of Notre Dame du Lac is a private Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, Indiana, USA....
, run by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, with a
B.B.AThe Bachelor of Business Administration is a bachelor's degree in business studies. In most universities, the degree is conferred upon a student after four years of full-time study in one or more areas of business concentrations. The BBA program usually includes general business courses and...
in 1957. A year later he married his first wife, Marge Cooney, who divorced him in 1975. There were five children from that marriage. He married his second (and present) wife, actress
Marlo ThomasMargaret Julia “Marlo” Thomas is an American actress, who first achieved fame on the TV series That Girl in the 1960s.-Early life:...
(daughter of
Danny ThomasDanny Thomas was an American nightclub comedian and television and film actor, best known for starring in the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy, or The Danny Thomas Show. He is also the founder of St...
), in 1980. They have lived in
Westport, ConnecticutWestport is a coastal town located on Long Island Sound in Fairfield County, Connecticut, 47 miles north of New York City in the United States...
since 1986.
Donahue does not see himself as "a very good Roman Catholic," given that he did not want to have his first marriage annulled. He has elaborated that he "will always be a Catholic" but that he opposes what he sees as the Church's "
antisexual theologyIn Roman Catholicism, the theology of the body is based on the premise that the human body has its origin in God. It will be, like the body of Jesus, resurrected, transformed and taken into heavenly glory. Theological anthropology is based on this premise...
". He has also said that he found
Madalyn Murray O'HairMadalyn Murray O'Hair was an American atheist. She was the founder of American Atheists and its president from 1963-1986. Her son, Jon Garth Murray was the president of the organization from 1986-1995, but she remained de facto president during this time.She is best known for the lawsuit, Murray v...
's message of
atheismAtheism can be either the rejection of theism,or the position that deities do not exist.In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities....
"very important."
Early career
Donahue began his career in 1957 as a production assistant at
KYW radioWTAM is an AM radio station in Cleveland, Ohio broadcasting on 1100 kHz with 50,000 watts. Its transmitter is located at the top of Snowville Road in Brecksville, Ohio. It is a class A clear channel station , sharing the frequency with KFAX in San Francisco...
and
televisionWKYC, channel 3, is an NBC-affiliated television station located in Cleveland, Ohio, owned by the Gannett Company. Its studio is located on the shores of Lake Erie, while its transmitter is located in Parma, Ohio.-Early years:...
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 MexicoAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 521,999 as of July 1, 2008, according to U.S. census estimates, and ranks as...
, he became program director for WABJ radio in
Adrian, MichiganAdrian is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Lenawee County. The population was 21,574 at the 2000 census. Adrian lies in Michigan's 7th congressional district.-Description:...
, soon after graduating. He moved on to become a
stringerIn journalism, a stringer is a type of freelance journalist who contributes reports to a news organization on an on-going basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work....
for the
CBS Evening NewsCBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
and later, an anchor of the morning newscast at
WHIO-TVWHIO-TV is a television station in Dayton, Ohio. It broadcasts on channel 7 and is an affiliate of CBS. In 2009, WHIO-TV ranked as the #1 CBS affiliate in the United States.-Station history:...
in
Dayton, OhioDayton is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 848,153 in the 2000 census. Dayton is the fourth largest...
, where his interviews with
Jimmy HoffaJames Riddle Hoffa was an American trade unionist.Hoffa served as the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1958–1971 despite being incarcerated during the latter four years of his tenure...
and
Billie Sol EstesBillie Sol Estes was a scandal-ridden Texas-based financier best known for his association with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and for having accused Johnson of a variety of crimes, including the assassination of his presidential predecessor, John F. Kennedy.Estes was born in Alanreed in west...
were picked up nationally. While in Dayton, Donahue also hosted
Conversation Piece, a phone-in afternoon talk show from 1963 to 1967 on
WHIO radioWHIO is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk Information format. Licensed to Dayton, Ohio, USA, the station serves the Cincinnati and Dayton area. The station is currently owned by Cox Radio, Inc...
. There, among others, he interviewed civil rights activists (including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
Malcolm XMalcolm X , also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against...
) and war dissenters.
The Phil Donahue Show / Donahue
On November 6, 1967, Donahue left the WHIO stations and moved his talk program to television with
The Phil Donahue Show on WLWD (now
WDTNWDTN is the NBC-affiliated television station for the Miami Valley area of Ohio that is licensed to Dayton. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 50 from a transmitter in the Frytown section of the city. Owned by the LIN TV Corporation, the station has studios on South Dixie...
), also in Dayton. Initially, the program was shown only on other stations owned by the
Crosley Broadcasting CorporationThe Crosley Broadcasting Corporation was a radio and television broadcaster founded by radio manufacturing pioneer Powel Crosley, Jr.. The company was an early operator of radio stations in the United States. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Crosley's flagship station was WLW...
(which would later take the name of its parent
Avco CompanyAvco Corporation is a subsidiary of Textron which operates Textron Systems Corporation and Lycoming.The Embry-Riddle Company created the Aviation Corporation in 1928 as a holding company tasked with acquiring small airlines...
), which also owned WLWD. But, in January 1970,
The Phil Donahue Show entered nationwide
syndicationIn broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows to multiple individual stations, without going through a broadcast network. It is common in countries where television is scheduled by networks with local affiliates, particularly in the United States...
.
After a 29-year run—26 years in syndication—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
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
'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
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
journalist
Vladimir PosnerVladimir Vladimirovich Posner , born 1 April 1934, is a Russian journalist best known in the West for appearing on television to represent and explain the views of the Soviet Union during the Cold War...
, which aired both on
CNBCCNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBC Universal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
and in syndication.
http://www.hollywood.com/celebrity/Phil_Donahue/189331
MSNBC program
In July 2002, Phil Donahue returned to television to host a show called
Donahue on
MSNBCMSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States and available in both the US and Canada. Its name is a combination of "MSN" and "NBC"....
. 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 393,000 viewers. . By then end of 2002, Donahue’s audience was down to 379,000. Although his ratings were less than 1/6th
Bill O'ReillyWilliam James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator...
, who shared the same time slot, Donahue was the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time it was canceled, managing to beat out
Chris MatthewsChristopher "Chris" Matthews is an American news anchor and political commentator, known for his nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American cable television channel MSNBC...
' "Hardball" in the ratings. 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".
Jack ShaferJack Shafer is a writer for the online magazine Slate. He currently edits and writes the column Press Box. Before joining Slate, he was editor for two city weeklies, Washington City Paper and SF Weekly. Much of Shafer's writing focuses on what he sees as a lack of precision and rigor in...
of Slate disagreed writing that the show's cancellation was based primarily on a combination of factors including cable TV's demographics, Donahue's age and the expense of the format.
Film producer
In 2007, Donahue served as Executive Producer for the feature documentary film,
Body of WarBody of War, directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, is a 2007 documentary following Tomas Young, an Iraq War veteran paralyzed from a bullet to the spine, on a physical and emotional journey as he adapts to his new body and begins to question the decision to go to war in Iraq.As Tomas's journey...
, which he also co-directed with independent filmmaker
Ellen SpiroEllen Spiro is an American documentary filmmaker. Spiro, who often works as a one person crew, is known for making humorous social issue films.Her most recent film is Body of War...
. The film tells the story of Tomas Young, a severely disabled Iraq War veteran and his turbulent postwar adjustments. The film features two new songs, "No More" and "Long Nights" by
Pearl JamPearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder , Jeff Ament , Stone Gossard , and Mike McCready...
's
Eddie VedderEddie Vedder is an American musician who serves as the lead singer and one of three guitarists for the American rock band Pearl Jam. Vedder left the Southern California music scene and moved to Seattle, Washington in 1990 to join Pearl Jam where he rose to fame amid the grunge movement of the...
. 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.
Vedder's involvement in the film stems from a meeting the two men had while participating in a
Chicago CubsThe Chicago Cubs are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago , the Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the...
fantasy camp, according to an interview Donahue did with the
Associated PressThe Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
.
External links
- Body of War
- Interview with Phil Donahue on "Body of War" at IFC.com
- Donahue, Phil from Museum of Broadcast Communications
The Museum of Broadcast Communications is located in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform, and entertain through our archives, public programs, screenings, exhibits, publications and...
- Interview with Phil Donahue on the state of the media from Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! is a syndicated program of news, analysis, and opinion aired by more than 700 radio and television, satellite and cable TV networks in North America...
- Video Interview from Archive of American Television
The Archive of American Television is a division of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation that films interviews with notable people from all aspects of the television industry....
- Phil Donahue Interview on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
George Mark Paul Stroumboulopoulos is a Canadian television and radio personality, and best known as the host of CBC Television's The Hour, a talk show about the world's current events.-Family:...