Everything about The Phil Donahue Show totally explained
The Phil Donahue Show, also known as
Donahue, was the first
tabloid talk show. The show had a 26-year run on national (U.S.) television, preceded by three years of local broadcast in
Dayton, Ohio, before ending in
1996.
History
In
1967, Donahue left
WHIO radio and
television in Dayton and became the host of a new television program,
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 relocated the show's home base to
Chicago in
1974, first housing it at then-
independent station WGN-TV. Around this time the show's popularity increased, and in the process it became a national phenomenon. When the Avco Company divested their broadcasting properties in
1976,
Multimedia Inc. assumed production and syndication of the program, which was now known as simply
Donahue. In
1982, Donahue moved the show to
CBS-owned
WBBM-TV for its final years based in Chicago and the Midwest.
In
1984,
Donahue introduced many viewers to
hip-hop culture for the first time, as a program featured
breakdancing for the first time on national television, accompanied by a performance from the
rap group
UTFO.
In
1985, Donahue moved the program's operations to
New York City, housing them in
NBC's
Rockefeller Plaza building. Prior to the move, a month-long series of commercials heralded the move, and NBC's late-night talk host
David Letterman would use portions of his national program counting down the days to Donahue's move with a huge calendar in his studio. One of the most talked-about incidents in
Donahue's history came on
January 21,
1985, soon after the show moved to New York. On this day's program, seven members of the audience appeared to faint during the broadcast, which was seen live in New York. Donahue, fearing the fainting was caused by both anxiety at being on television and an overheated studio, eventually cleared the studio of audience members and then resumed the show. It turned out the fainting "spell" was cooked up by media hoaxer
Alan Abel in what Abel said was a protest against what he termed as poor-quality television.
In
1992, Donahue celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his local and national program with a NBC special produced at the
Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, in which he was lauded by his talk-show peers. Ironically, in many corners, he was seen as having been bypassed both by
Oprah Winfrey, whose own hugely successful national show was based in Donahue's former Chicago home base; and
Sally Jessy Raphael, whose own talk show was distributed by Donahue's syndicator, Multimedia.
The end of Donahue
As the 1990s progressed, the talk show field (now labeled as "tabloid" or "trash" talk) became saturated, and eventually Donahue and his program became a victim.
Ratings steadily declined, leading one station,
KGO-TV in
San Francisco, to drop the program at the start of the
1995-
1996 season. Weeks later, New York's
WNBC-TV, whose studios housed the program, also cancelled it.
Donahue was also evicted from its Rockefeller Plaza home, and relocated to new studios in Manhattan. Other stations, such as
KTRK-TV in
Houston, moved
Donahue to a late-night time slot. The program didn't relocate to another station in either New York or San Francisco, two of the largest television markets. Donahue ended the series after 29 years, 26 of them 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.
As a result of several acquisitions and mergers since 1996, the
Donahue show catalog is now the property of
NBC Universal Television.
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Phil Donahue Show'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://the_phil_donahue_show.totallyexplained.com">The Phil Donahue Show Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
