How big was Phil Donahue?

He was so big that for several months in the fall of 1984, David Letterman, the irreverent host of his own late-night talk show, had a countdown calendar marking off the days before afternoons most popular talk show host arrived from Chicago to New york City to tape “The Phil Donahue Show.”

In the fall of 1984, the big buzz was Donahue relocating to New York. Before the move, the airwaves were flooded with a month-long series of commercials heralding the move.

With 9 million daily viewers, Donahue became a phenomenon. Newsweek October 1979

As a New Yorker and a devotee of Donahue, I couldn’t wait for the beloved talk show host to arrive in the Big Apple and the chance to score tickets to one of his tapings at 30 Rock.  The truth is I had an enormous crush on him.

Audience participation was integral to Donahue’s show , pioneering that aspect earlier than anyone else.

Swoon-worthy, he was a real-deal feminist. No surprise that Marlo Thomas was smitten with him when the two fell in love on his show. Boyish looking even after his hair turned to salt and pepper he brought a wide-eyed mid-western earnestness and charm to talk TV.

Trailing his microphone cord he would confront guests with questions from the studio audience. How I longed to sit in that audience, catch his attention, and be allowed to ask a question as he held the mike gazing at me earnestly.

Phil was the first talk show host to invite the audience into the act. Audience participation was integral to his show and he pioneered that aspect decades earlier than anyone else.

Phil Donahue’s First Show 1967 and first guest was Madalyn Murray O’ Hair a controversial atheist. Photo: Everett Collection

On November 6, 1967, the television talk show, that would become the template for all others, aired for the first time on WLWD in Dayton Ohio.

“The Phil Donahue Show” debuted live with a 31-year-old news radio journalist named Phil Donahue, revolutionizing TV.

The audience had no idea what they were getting into. The show had no announcer, no band, no couch, no desk, and just one guest who was far from an entertainer. In fact, she was America’s most famous and unpopular atheist activist named Madalyn Murray O’Hair who worked to throw prayer out of public schools.

For the first time, viewers at home could call in and question a TV show guest, or participate in the discussion by phone.

On live TV with the at-home audience able to call in, callers heatedly dialed in during that first hour of television and jammed the southwestern Ohio telephone system.

Donahue created a new genre – the daytime TV talk show – discussing current news topics and controversies. The issues-oriented show was born.

His willingness to explore the hot-button social issues of the day emerged immediately. He took on topics no one else dared speaking words no one else dared to speak out loud on TV – incest, abortion,  homosexuality.

Donahue was awarded 20 Emmy Awards during his broadcasting career. 10 for Outstanding Talk Show Host, and 10 for The Phil Donahue Show.

Until the mid-1980s his was the only talk-back show on TV an eclectic mixture of earnest public affairs and chat with strange but true confessions of ordinary women. His TV show went national in 1970, moved to Chicago in 1974, and then to NBC’s Rockefeller Plaza’s Studio 8-G in 1985.

Donahues format was easily copied but he was the first.

And like so many originals, he was simply the best.

R.I.P.

Post script

It’s no surprise that in my 1985 book “This Year’s Girl , I included Phil Donahue as an important cultural touchstone in 1980.