RIP: Groundbreaking TV Talk Show Host Was 88 (summary of Donahue Show)
His guests were mostly leftists. The only daytime talk show I watched, the rest were trash TV.
https://deadline.com/2024/08/phil-donahue-dead-1236043471/
His usually genial demeanor did not, however, mean that Donahue avoided hot-button issues. Quite the contrary. Carrying a hand-held mic and nearly running from one audience member to another, Donahue helped open up daytime talk to a wide swath of issues and personalities who were controversial then and, in many instances, remain so today. He gave voice to gay rights activists, anti-war protestors, abortion rights supporters and opponents, the Ku Klux Klan, atheists, pedophilia within the Catholic Church clergy, 1990s Club Kids, and feminists and anti-feminists.
Donahue’s Medal of Freedom biography noted that “In an era in which daytime television was dominated by a mundane mix of soap operas, game shows and musical variety shows, Donahue eschewed the orchestras and flashing lights for a single prop—a hand-held mic—and stormed onto the airwaves with programs devoted to the most controversial issues of our time. And for the first time in television history, a TV host was inviting the American audience to become a part of the national conversation, both inside his studio and from viewers phoning in from around the country. ‘Is the caller there?’ became a national catchphrase.”
His Medal of Freedom biography also mentioned some highlights of Donahue’s show: Milton Friedman deciphering “arcane economics,” Nelson Mandela decrying apartheid, Gloria Steinem introducing “a new era of activist feminism,” and Muhammad Ali speaking out on race, religion and sports. Donahue was, the bio states, “the first TV host to feature a person living with AIDS, when the number of cases was only in the hundreds.”
“Most important,” the bio continues, “Donahue recognized the unmatchable power of his medium, and fought to ensure that his legions of viewers—whether seated in his studio, or calling in with questions from their homes—were part of the critical dialogue that brought people together. When consumer advocate Ralph Nader (author of Unsafe at Any Speed) came onto the show to talk about automobile safety, Donahue also brought on the recently retired president of General Motors so that viewers could witness the debate firsthand and decide for themselves exactly what was at stake when they climbed behind the wheel of the family wagon.” In 1986, Donahue became the first Western journalist to visit the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its catastrophic event that year, and in 1992 he invited Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush onto the same episode “so that they could speak with each other—and viewers—in an effort to articulate their differences.”