Talk show host Phil Donahue invented the issue-oriented talk show in the late 1960s because his TV station didn’t reign in his revolutionary ideas.
Managers of WLWD-TV (now WDTN-TV) “allowed him to figure out who he was. The station didn’t hold him back because he did wild things,” said his widow, actress Marlo Thomas, during a dedication ceremony for a Phil Donahue historical marker outside the TV station Monday.
Knowing that he couldn’t rely on big-name celebrities coming to Dayton, Donahue’s “wild things” included devoting his one-hour show to discussions of atheism, abortion, feminism, pacifism, nudism, anatomically correct dolls and homosexuality.
“He put the first gay guy on television (in 1968)," she said. He also let his studio audience —and callers from home — participate in the conversation.
The marker, erected by the city of Moraine, a Dayton suburb, says the “groundbreaking show was the first popular talk show to feature a format that included audience participation and became known for its wide-ranging discussions on social and controversial issues.”
Donahue broadcast from Channel 2 from Nov. 6, 1967 to 1974. Then the show moved to Chicago and later to New York City in 1986. It ended after 29 years in 1996. He died in 2024 at age 88.
The dedication ceremony in the Channel 2 news studio — where Donahue did his show — included a 2008 interview with Donahue about his first days on TV.
“During a break, the audience was asking better questions than I was. And if it hadn’t been for that, we wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
Donahue would run up and down the aisles, extending a microphone in hand, to let audience members participate in the talk show. Donahue, who had hosted a 1960's WHIO-AM afternoon call-in show called Conversation Piece, had a telephone on his desk the first years to take calls from viewers at home.
The ceremony included a video message from Oprah Winfrey, who knocked Donahue out of first place in the daytime ratings in 1987.
“There would not have been an Oprah show if there hadn’t been a Phil Donahue Show. Before that, there was nobody like him,” Winfrey said.
About 100 people gathered in the studio seated on chairs from the Donahue show, said Melissa Jones, WDTN-TV vice president and general manager. In attendance were Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife, Fran, and several former Donahue show staffers.
Thomas, who met Donahue when she was a guest on his show in Chicago in 1977, married him in 1980. She knew the first day that Donahue was special.
“We were walking from the dressing rooms to the studio and he asked me, ‘Do you mind if I ask about your mother?’ I had been on TV lots of times but no one had asked me about my mother. She was an Italian woman. She was a singer and had her own show," said the actress, the daughter of comedian Danny Thomas and Rose Marie Cassaniti.
“My mom grew up in Detroit. My dad grew up in Toledo,” she said.
Donahue grew up in Cleveland, was a TV star in Dayton, and lived in Centerville across the street from humorist Erma Bombeck.
“People wondered why this girl from Beverly Hills knew so much about I-75!” Thomas joked.
Thomas said her husband had courage and curiosity. Long after his talk show ended, “he was always interviewing people, asking questions just for himself,” she said.
“Phil would say, ‘I love to turn over a rock and see what’s on the other side.’ He always said, ‘You can’t fix something if you don’t understand it.’ “
Donahue, syndicated nationally by Cincinnati-based AVCO Broadcasting, earned 21 Daytime Emmys, including six for best talk show, eight for Donahue as best host, and a lifetime achievement award, plus a Peabody Award. Four consecutive Daytime Emmys (1977-80) not only helped put Donahue atop of the daytime ratings, but his 6 million viewers in 200 TV markets were more than Good Morning America, the Today show or Carson's Tonight Show in 1979.
Thomas has three-prime time Emmy Awards for Free To Be … You And Me, her 1974 children’s special; Nobody’s Child, as lead actress in a 1986 miniseries; and Free To Be … A Family, a 1989 children’s program. She was nominated for her starring role in ABC's That Girl sitcom in 1971, and for playing Jennifer Aniston’s mother in Friends in 1996. She also is a tireless promoter for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., founded by her father.
The historical marker is the 18th erected by the city of Moraine since 2015.
“He (Donahue) spoke so much about Dayton and WLWD. I’m tickled to be here,” Thomas said. Her voice cracked as she added, “He was a great guy. I loved him very much and miss him every day.”
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