Before there was Jerry Springer there was Phil Donahue. Donahue, who has died aged 88, took the talkshow format into the audience, a tactic that paved the way for a small herd of daytime programmes. As Oprah Winfrey said in 2018: “If it weren’t for Phil Donahue, there would never have been an Oprah Show.”
Oprah’s acknowledgment reflected Donahue’s hold over daytime television’s primary audience: women. His programmes often addressed serious and even controversial topics, presented with moderation and without rancour, mixed with often salacious discussions of sex and relationships, the attention-grabbing stuff that became the ubiquitous fodder for a relentless drive to the bottom of the marketplace for hosts Donahue called “my illegitimate children” – Jenny Jones, Sally Jessy Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Montel Williams or Ricki Lake.
